Enabling Autonomous Space Mission Operations with Artificial Intelligence

For over 50 years, NASA's crewed missions have been confined to the Earth-Moon system, where speed-of-light communications delays between crew and ground are practically nonexistent. This ground-centered mode of operations, with a large, ground-based suppor team, is not sustainable for NASA's future human exploration missions to Mars. Future astronauts will need smarter tools to make decisions on their own, without assistance from ground-based mission control. In this talk, we will describe several demonstrations of astronaut decision support tools using AI techniques including automated planning, fault diagnosis, automated reasoning and machine learning. These demonstrations show how developments in AI will enable humanity's journey to Mars.