NASA plans to install an Apple iPad in the unmanned Orion spacecraft on the Artemis 1 moon mission to test the response of Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa in space, the company said Aug. 11.
NASA’s new lunar rocket and unmanned Orion spacecraft, called the Space Launch System (SLS), will soon be launched, with the main goal of the mission being to verify that the new SLS rocket and spacecraft are capable of sending astronauts to the moon on future missions. Another small experiment on NASA’s mission is the use of an Apple iPad on board the Orion spacecraft to help test Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.
“Following the success of Artemis 1, NASA plans to launch a human spaceflight with the Artemis 2 mission in 2024. A year later, NASA plans to send the first female astronaut and astronaut of color to the surface of the moon.
“The Artemis 1 mission will be used primarily to demonstrate the launch of the SLS rocket and to test the performance of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield during re-entry into the atmosphere. But one of the spacecraft communication technology experiments, Callisto, will demonstrate how consumer-grade technology can be effectively integrated with future spacecraft.
The Callisto technology demonstration will integrate Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa and Cisco’s video conferencing system WebEx, with the goal of demonstrating how voice commands can improve astronauts’ lives and work in space. Lockheed Martin, NASA is currently working with Amazon and Cisco on IoT.
“I can imagine a future where astronauts can access telemetry information such as spacecraft flight status and position, battery voltage, and fuel conditions through simple voice commands,” said Howard Hu, associate program manager for Orion at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
But testing Alexa on a spacecraft orbiting the moon is much more difficult than testing it at home with Echo speakers and Wi-Fi, NASA explained in a blog post earlier this year: “The industry-funded payload will be housed on the Orion spacecraft’s center console, where a tablet with Cisco Webex videoconferencing software is used to send data from the Johnson Mission Control Center. Computer is used to transmit video and audio from Johnson Mission Control, while hardware software customized by a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Amazon will be used to test Alexa, Amazon’s digital assistant, to see how it responds to the transmitted audio.”
When traveling in deep space, Alexa on Orion takes a long time to connect to cloud computing services on Earth, so in the Callisto technology demonstration, Alexa, Amazon’s digital assistant, will use the NASA deep space network to communicate with and respond to a local database on the spacecraft.
Because the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis 1 mission is in an unmanned mode, Apple iPads play the role of astronauts talking to Alexa via Cisco Webex video conferencing software. NASA said, “Participants will ask questions to Alexa remotely or give mission commands at a console with a camera and microphone. Their images and voices will be broadcast from Mission Control to the Orion spacecraft, video of the participant will be displayed on a tablet, audio will play from the speakers, and Alexa will then capture the audio and respond.”
Apple products have been in space for a long time, and iPads are used regularly by ISS astronauts. but the moon is much further away than the ISS, and this will be the first time NASA has carried an Apple iPad on a mission to the moon.
