The Orion spacecraft will have a voice assistant as in the "Start Trek"

In the cult sci-fi series"Star Trek" the crew of the spacecraft "Enterprise" at any time could ask a question to the virtual assistant and immediately get an answer to it. Today, such technology is available to anyone, because smartphones and smart speakers have voice assistants like Google Assistant, Alice from Yandex, and so on. The scientific community is already in full swing preparing for travel to the Moon and Mars, so in the future, voice assistants may appear in real spaceships. One of the first virtual assistants to assist in space travel will be Amazon Alexa - already in 2023 it will be tested inside the Orion spacecraft. As part of the first stage of the Artemis mission, the aircraft will fly around the moon and return. During the flight, people will be able to ask the assistant questions from a distance.

Seems like science fiction is becoming reality

Features of Amazon Alexa Voice Assistant

Details about the voice assistant forof the Orion spacecraft shared the publication Digital Trends. At the moment, the voice assistant Alexa is built into the smart speakers Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot. She can search for information on the Internet, manage music, make a to-do list, set an alarm and perform many other tasks to make life easier for the user. In Russia, this assistant is not popular and some people do not even know about it, because Alexa does not support Russian.

Amazon Echo smart speaker with Alexa voice assistant

One of the main features of the Alexa assistantis to support "skills". If necessary, third-party developers can teach him to execute commands that are not provided by the manufacturer. Most likely, this is why the role of the virtual satellite of space travelers fell to the assistant from Amazon. No, the organizers of the Artemis mission are not going to attach columns with an assistant to the Orion spacecraft - separate software and hardware will be created for the spacecraft.

Alexa voice assistant in space

The body of the device, inside which it will "live"assistant, will be protected from cosmic radiation, which will certainly affect the ship during a flight to the moon. In terms of software, the assistant will have access to information about the state of the ship to give astronauts an idea of ​​the orientation of the spacecraft, the level of water supply, the state of the battery, and so on.

Orion is already the most advanced spacecraftthe ship ever built to carry astronauts to the moon. A voice assistant can take it to the next level, said Howard Hu, deputy chief of the Orion program at NASA.

In the first stage of the Artemis program, the shipOrion will fly around the Moon. There will be no one inside it, but the researchers will be able to command the assistant remotely. It goes without saying that voice commands will be used for this - otherwise there will be no point in introducing an assistant into a spacecraft. As part of this test, scientists want to understand how convenient this technology is in space. If it is of little use, the organizers of the Artemis mission will abandon the idea of ​​using Amazon Alexa in the Orion spacecraft.

The Orion spacecraft will be equipped with a voice assistant

See also: How many billions of dollars does it cost to return people to the moon?

When will humans be returned to the moon?

After the unmanned flyby of the moon, it will befor a while - the manned mission will take place no earlier than 2025. Earlier it was planned to do this earlier, however, due to problems with spacesuits, the flight with the participation of real people had to be postponed. You can read more about the transfer of the manned mission of Artemis in this article.

People will return to the moon no earlier than 2025

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Finally, it is important to note that in 2018voice assistant Alexa received the Big Brother Award for flagrant violation of privacy and freedom of citizens. Not only does the system itself collect too much data about users, it also has serious vulnerabilities. A couple of years ago, researchers at Check Point discovered vulnerabilities that allowed hackers to steal people's sensitive data. The question arises - will this vulnerability cause serious problems? After all, it is possible that hackers will somehow hack into the "space" version of the voice assistant and this will lead to the failure of the entire mission. What do you think of it? Share your opinion in the comments.