Artificial intelligence has already conquered the Earth and now is on its way to the moon. In a few months, a machine learning system developed by the Canadian company Mission Control Space Services (MCSS) should land on lunar soil. He travels aboard the wanderer rashidfrom the United Arab Emirates, launched into space by SpaceX on December 11.

In an interview with Space, Ewan Reid, CEO of MCSS, says that if the mission is successful, the technology will be a big lunar thruster for NASA. “Artificial intelligence will be an essential tool for decision-making on board the spacecraft.”

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The purpose of the mission, with the Rashid rover, is to advance in the search for minerals and other objects of interest on the lunar surface. It should work for about one lunar day, which is equivalent to 29 days on Earth.

The Canadian company will receive the robot’s navigation images via a Japanese lander, which will take care of communications with Earth. Consequently, with its algorithm, “each pixel of the image [será] classified as a certain type of terrain,” Reid reported.

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“This result will be fed back to the ground and used by scientists and engineers in our office in Ottawa, as well as other Canadian universities, to help decide where the rover should go,” he added.

AI-led space missions

According Spacefuture missions will likely leave humans “out of the loop” as experts are confident that AI can differentiate between minerals and distinguish critical elements such as rocks and craters.

Reid said one of the benefits of this technology is that on the Moon it can save a lot of satellite bandwidth because it would only share the data, images and video that scientists need.

It could still be reused throughout the solar system, including applications such as detecting “dark” craft on Earth trying to navigate without recording or filtering planetary image clouds.

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