{"id":17139,"date":"2025-02-26T17:35:15","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T09:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/amazon-web-services-focuses-on-optimizing-artificial-intelligence-in-space\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T17:35:15","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T09:35:15","slug":"amazon-web-services-focuses-on-optimizing-artificial-intelligence-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/amazon-web-services-focuses-on-optimizing-artificial-intelligence-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Web Services focuses on optimizing artificial intelligence in space"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Illustration:
Amazon Web Services demonstrated data processing in orbit in 2022, using a payload on D-Orbit\u2019s ION satellite carrier, shown in this artist\u2019s conception. (D-Orbit Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are turning into requirements for space operations, and Amazon Web Services is optimizing its products to reflect that view, according to the former Air Force major general who\u2019s now in charge of AWS\u2019 aerospace initiatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI, ML, generative AI have become table stakes for our future on-orbit systems and capabilities,\u201d Clint Crosier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions at AWS, said today during Booz Allen Hamilton\u2019s annual Space + AI Summit. \u201cWe have reached the limit of human capacity to digest petabytes and petabytes of data in real time and make any sort of intelligent decisions about them. We\u2019ve culminated, so we must further embrace AI, ML and generative AI capabilities for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crosier and other speakers at the summit, conducted at the headquarters of the Air & Space Forces Association in Virginia, pointed to the rapidly rising number of satellites in low Earth orbit as a major factor behind the need for more sophisticated AI tools. Over the past decade, that number has risen from about 1,300 to more than 10,000. <\/p>\n

Merely keeping track of all those satellites is a challenging task \u2014 and it\u2019s just as challenging to send all that data down to Earth for processing.<\/p>\n

Enhancing the onboard capabilities of the satellites themselves \u2014 in effect, moving edge computing into orbit \u2014 is one of the strategies favored by AWS. In 2022, AWS and its commercial partners successfully tested a system that processed satellite image data in space. \u201cWe reduced overall bandwidth requirements by 42% while achieving 100% mission accomplishment,\u201d Crosier said.<\/p>\n

\"Clint
Clint Crosier is director of aerospace and satellite solutions at Amazon Web Services. (Amazon Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crosier talked up the idea of turning cutting-edge innovations into commercial off-the-shelf components, or COTS. He said AWS and other players in the tech industry should always be looking at ways to optimize their systems to cope with the challenges of the space environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to develop some purpose-built things optimized for allowing us to do advanced AI, ML and generative AI on orbit that may not exist today, but are going to be COTS tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

AWS is also working with NASA on a variety of projects aimed at harnessing the power of AI for space operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cNASA has already started porting many of their technical manuals into AWS\u2019 generative AI capabilities, such that you can do a RAG chatbot right now in certain parts of NASA and say, \u2018Give me all the specs on a human lander capability, and modify, you know, X or Y by mass or payload,’\u201d Crosier said. \u201cAnd the system will come back and provide you all that in recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n

That capability could be a lifesaver for future missions to Mars, where communication challenges could make it difficult for astronauts to get real-time assistance from engineers back on Earth.<\/p>\n

Crosier referred to the classic tale of Apollo 13 in 1970, when Mission Control scrambled to rescue the crew cope after an oxygen-tank explosion in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about porting that into the future,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018Houston, I have a problem\u2019 becomes \u2018Houston, I have a solution,\u2019 because you\u2019ve got this autonomous capability on the surface of Mars. Here\u2019s all the in-situ resources I have. Here\u2019s the storage and compute capability I have. Now go generate me three courses of action to solve the problem that I have. And gen-AI systems will bring back courses of action that will solve whatever challenges you\u2019re facing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years, NASA has been working on a similar project to harness AI for on-the-scene medical diagnosis in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes somebody gets sick, for example, and depending on the orbit, it could take up to 40 minutes between you sending a signal from Mars until you get it back from Earth,\u201d said Omar Hatamleh, who\u2019s the chief AI officer at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cSo we\u2019re creating something called \u2018Doctor in a Box\u2019 as well. Imagine, if you have medical issues, you can have interactions with these, and these systems are trained specifically on medical domains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatamleh said other types of AI systems could be trained as robotic construction workers \u2014 to build habitats on Mars before the humans arrive, or to extract the raw materials necessary to support them while they\u2019re there.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that giving AI agents a bigger role in space exploration could raise challenges worthy of a science-fiction tale. For example, suppose a robot goes out on an expedition with two human astronauts, and both of the humans are injured in an accident. \u201cWhich one does the humanoid robot choose to come back to the base?\u201d Hatamleh asked.<\/p>\n

He noted that science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov came up with what he called the Three Laws of Robotics, the first of which declared that \u201ca robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what if we have on-the-edge systems? Humanoid robots will be surgeons on the surface of a distant planet. \u2026 The fact that it\u2019s doing an incision on a person \u2014 that\u2019s harming a person, and that goes completely against the laws of Asimov,\u201d Hatamleh said. \u201cSo, even the most fundamental, basic laws that we abided by for a long time need to be re-evaluated, reassessed for the next evolution of these technological advances.\u201d <\/p>\n

This report has been updated to characterize Crosier\u2019s views on the tech industry\u2019s approach to space applications more precisely.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon Web Services demonstrated data processing in orbit in 2022, using a payload on D-Orbit\u2019s ION satellite carrier, shown in this artist\u2019s conception. (D-Orbit Illustration) Artificial intelligence and machine learning are turning into requirements for space operations, and Amazon Web Services is optimizing its products to reflect that view, according to the former Air Force […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4455,130,4454,4374,20,442,21],"class_list":["post-17139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amazon-web-services","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cloud-tech","tag-data-centers","tag-satellite","tag-satellites","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}