Amazon’s Alexa and Cisco’s Webex Head to Deep Space on NASA’s Next Lunar Mission

When NASA first launches its massive new rocket into deep space in the coming months, a familiar voice assistant and video teleconferencing tool will accompany the trip. A version of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and Cisco’s Webex video conferencing platform will be included in the flight to space, as part of a technology demonstration to see if these tools could benefit future astronauts flying to distant destinations like the Moon and Mars.

The next flight is known as Artemis I, and it is the first test mission in a series of flights planned for NASA’s Artemis program – an initiative to send the first woman and the first person color on the surface of the Moon. Tentatively set for March, Artemis I will mark the maiden flight of NASA’s next-generation rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, a gargantuan rocket that Boeing has been developing for a decade. The SLS is designed to launch people and goods into deep space, with passengers on top of the vehicle in a new crew capsule called the Orion, developed by Lockheed Martin.

For Artemis I, SLS will launch an Orion crew capsule around the Moon on a weeklong flight – the first time the two vehicles have ever flown into space together. This is a critical test launch, so no one will be flying inside Orion except for a dummy. However, the false passenger will have machine companions. Lockheed Martin has partnered with Amazon and Cisco to mount a “human-machine interface” where Orion’s control panel will be in the future. Called Callisto after Artemis’ companion in Greek mythology, the box will have a voice-activated Alexa speaker, with its iconic blue light ring, and an iPad that runs Webex.

At some point in the Artemis I mission, people on the ground will test the box, as if astronauts are interacting with the speaker and screen aboard Orion. Ultimately, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, and Cisco want to see if such an interface would benefit future deep space travelers.

“We (…) envision a future in which astronauts could turn to on-board artificial intelligence for information, help and ultimately company,” said Aaron Rubenson, vice president of Alexa Everywhere at Amazon, during a press briefing. “You can easily imagine astronauts turning to this on-board AI to talk about the state of a subsystem or maybe control cabin lights or request a particular camera view.”

To see if these tools work, Lockheed Martin will employ “virtual team members” in the field. While Orion is in space, someone from NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston will give Alexa an order. This person’s voice will be played over a speaker inside Orion to activate Alexa. Virtual crew members will ask for certain types of information, such as how fast Orion is moving through space or how long before the capsule performs its next propellant burn. Alexa is designed to pull real-time data from Orion to answer these questions through its speaker.

The Orion spacecraft is equipped with Wi-Fi, but since the vehicle will travel through space far from Earth during the demonstration, internet connectivity will be limited. As a result, Alexa won’t need to access the internet during the flight to answer some of the virtual crewmembers’ immediate questions. Instead, Amazon designed this Alex with a system known as “local voice control,” allowing him to respond to a wide variety of predetermined commands. “There are hundreds of settings, thousands of statements, where we can get that real-time access,” Rob Chambers, director of commercial civilian space strategy at Lockheed Martin, said during the briefing.

Virtual crew members will also ask Alexa to change the lighting inside Orion. “This is the iconic use case of Alexa, at least around my house,” Chambers said. Lockheed Martin installed a separate LED lighting system inside the capsule behind the display panel, which Alexa should be able to control. Lockheed Martin also installed a few microphones and cameras in Orion’s cockpit, along with a virtual reality camera, to record the demonstration and ensure the box works during the mission.

Image: Lockheed Martin

The last test will see if the Webex platform is working. Virtual ground crew members will appear on the iPad screen inside Orion and hold a 720P video conference with Alexa during the flight. Of course, poor internet connectivity will likely be a problem with this one as well. “There will be a lot of back-loss compensation technologies because your network connectivity won’t be as reliable as what you have,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco. , during the briefing. “And so we have to make sure that is taken into account. Cisco envisions that this tool could be used by astronauts for video conferencing with mission control members or perhaps loved ones on the ground while the astronauts travel through space.

However, Callisto is primarily a tech demo, and there are currently no plans to fly the box on future missions with Orion. The next flight after Artemis I is Artemis II, which will actually have astronauts aboard Orion flying around the Moon. If Callisto turns out to be successful, it’s possible that a future version of the system will be part of future Artemis missions, but in a much different form. “We are discussing with NASA other applications of this,” Chambers said.

The partners already have big visions of what future Callisto systems might do, from controlling timers, video screens, cameras inside a spaceship cockpit or ambient temperatures. “We see the value now,” Chambers said. “We can begin to work with members of the space industry to determine what are the most valuable things that should purchase their way to this capability.”