NASA Is Installing Amazon Alexa on Its Next Moon Mission, for Some Cursed Reason – Futurism

Alexa, open the pod bay doors. Amazon to Artemis

In yet another odd marriage of capitalism and space travel,Lockheed Martin has announced that it will be sending an Amazon Echo as part of the upcoming Artemis 1 mission.

No, astronauts wont be using it to check the weather or to play some lunar road trip tunes. Instead, itll be used to explore how commercially-available voice recognition technology could be used to help astronauts in future missions.

The project, dubbed Callisto, is a partnership between Amazon and Cisco. The idea is to demonstrate how Alexa, along with Ciscos teleconferencing platform Webex, could be used on future missions, SpaceNews reports.

We want to show that this type of technology can help astronauts with some of those unique human interface technologies, making their jobs simpler, safer, more efficient, Rob Chambers, Lockheed Martins director of commercial civil space strategy, told the site.

Lockheed hopes the tech will be able to help astronauts with tasks ranging from the simple to literal rocket science.

For example, crewmembers might be able to access key pieces of data regarding flight trajectory with it, and might even be able to adjust their spacecraft controls via voice command.

One way youll be able to do this with the Callisto payload is to say, Alexa, what is the average temperature across all the batteries, and what is the peak temperature? Itll perform that data processing for you, Chambers explained.

Artemis 1 is an uncrewed mission, so there wont actually be anyone aboard to test out Callistos voice command. Instead, Chambers said there will be virtual crew members that will give commands to the AI.

This is all about testing it on this flight, seeing if its valuable, and then we can assess how it can be used as we move forward not just on Orion but on habitats, at Gateway, rovers, and any number of other applications were actively looking at, he told the site.

So it seems like this is mostly a gimmick for now. If things do go well, though, we might see a future where astronauts are controlling their craft via voice command.

Hopefully, they work out the kinks until then to avoid any HAL 9000 scenarios.

READ MORE: Amazons Alexa to be tested on Artemis 1 [SpaceNews]

More on Artemis 1: NASA Head Says Moon Landing Delayed a Year, Blames Jeff Bezos Lawsuit

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

Read more from the original source:
NASA Is Installing Amazon Alexa on Its Next Moon Mission, for Some Cursed Reason - Futurism