Habitation module
CO₂ in the modulethreshold
“CO₂ is rising in the habitation module and has just crossed the threshold. I suggest the appropriate procedure.”
AMAIA · CNES · Space
What can I do for you?
As part of the Spaceship FR project run by CNES, the French space agency, we are developing AMAIA, an assistant for a crew cut off from Earth. We are preparing it in a simulated space habitat, with the aim of having it on board for a return to the Moon, then a journey to Mars.
Base network
Crew: “Dim the lights in the habitation module and restart the ventilation.”
“Done.”
Workshop · procedure
“Step 3 of 6: turn off the module ventilation, then tell me when that’s done.”
Crew: “Done.”
Medical bay · diagnostic support
stated limitmeasured value
“The measured value exceeds the limit in section 4. Here is the passage.”
Mission station
“Procedure complete. Here is the report.”
Procedure report
Six of six steps completed. Ventilation filter replaced and ventilation back on. No anomalies found.
Waiting for an answer from Mars: 6 to 45 minutes
A radio wave travels at the speed of light. From Earth to the Moon, a message takes 1.3 seconds: the start of a reply arrives after 2.6 seconds. To Mars, the one-way trip alone takes 3 to 22 minutes, depending on where the two planets are. A conversation is then no longer possible, and an emergency plays out long before mission control hears the first word.
00:00
Real time
The question leaves Earth and travels at the speed of light.
Earth
Moon 384,400 km
Mars at its closest 54.6 million km
Mars at its furthest 401 million km
When the Sun cuts the link
Roughly every 26 months, the Sun comes between Earth and Mars. Space agencies then suspend almost all commands to their spacecraft at Mars for about two weeks.
On the Moon too, contact can be lost. At the south pole, where several agencies want to set up a base, Earth drops below the horizon for part of the month: to stay in contact, relays are needed.
Launch windows to Mars also come round roughly every 26 months: no one can count on help arriving the following week.
Everything AMAIA needs is already on site
We run AMAIA on a computer installed in the habitat, with no internet connection. Procedures, sensor readings and the model that understands speech: everything is on site.
The crew speak to it, even with their hands full, or type to it. AMAIA knows the state of the base’s equipment and links its technical systems together: habitat sensors, alerts, procedures, inventory, medical monitoring and extravehicular activities. It guides the crew through procedures, warns them when a reading drifts, acts on equipment with their approval, and writes the report at the end. It keeps doing so when the link to Earth goes down.
A crew that travels far does not take its mission control or its experts. It takes what they know.
On the ground, preparing for Mars
AMAIA was first called AI4U. During the simulated Mars mission MDRS 311, six crew members lived with it for a month in the Utah desert. They had no internet, and their support centre could be reached only once a day. Operators then tried it out in SPHERE, a Mars simulation dome.
We are continuing these trials on the ground today. They teach us when the crew needs AMAIA, how crew members talk to it with their hands full, and what they expect of it when no one else can answer.
We want the crew returning to the Moon, then heading for Mars, to have beside it an artificial intelligence that knows its procedures and its habitat, and that answers when Earth cannot be reached.