Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to install an Apple iPad in the Orion unmanned spacecraft of the Artemis 1 moon mission to test the response of Amazon digital assistant Alexa in space.

NASA's new lunar landing rocket and Orion unmanned spacecraft called the Space launch system (SLS) are about to launch, and the main goal of the mission is to verify that the new SLS rockets and spacecraft are capable of sending astronauts to the moon in future missions. Another small experiment in NASA's mission was to use Apple's iPad to help test Amazon's Alexa voice assistant on the Orion spacecraft.

Following the success of Artemis 1, NASA plans to conduct a manned space flight through 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 is mainly used to demonstrate the launch of the SLS rocket and to test the heat shield performance of the Orion spacecraft upon re-entry. But one of the spacecraft communications technology experiments, called Callisto, will show how consumer technology can be effectively integrated with future spacecraft.

The Callisto technology demonstration will integrate Amazon digital assistant Alexa and Cisco's videoconferencing system WebEx to demonstrate how voice commands can improve the lives and work of astronauts in space. Lockheed Martin and NASA are currently working with Amazon and Cisco to develop Callisto.

"I can imagine that in the future astronauts will be able to obtain telemetry information such as spacecraft flight status and position, battery voltage and fuel through simple voice commands," said Howard Hu, associate manager of the Orion program at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.

But testing Alexa on a spaceship orbiting the moon is much more difficult than using Echo speakers and Wi-Fi at home. NASA explained in a blog post earlier this year: "the industry-funded payload will be placed on the center console of the Orion spacecraft, one of which is equipped with Cisco Webex videoconferencing software to transmit video and audio from Johnson Mission Control Center, while hardware and software customized by Lockheed Martin and Amazon will be used to test Amazon Digital Assistant Alexa. See how it responds to the transmitted audio. "

When traveling in deep space, Alexa in Orion takes a long time to connect to cloud computing services on Earth, so in the Callisto technology demonstration, Amazon Digital Assistant Alexa will use the NASA Deep Space Network to communicate and respond to the ship's local database.

Because of the unmanned mode of the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis 1 mission, Apple iPad played the role of an astronaut talking to Alexa through Cisco Webex videoconferencing software. "participants will ask Alexa questions remotely or issue mission orders in front of a console with a camera and microphone," NASA said. "their images and sounds will be broadcast from the mission control center to the Orion spacecraft, and the participants' video will be displayed on the tablet, the speakers will play audio, and then Alexa will capture the audio and respond."

Apple products have been in space for a long time, and astronauts on the International Space Station often use iPad. But the moon is much farther away than the International Space Station, and it will be the first time the NASA has carried an Apple iPad on a lunar mission.

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