Intelligent Astronaut Associate for Next Generation Space Systems

Astronaut crews operating next-generation spacecraft and space systems will be tasked with managing highly complex automated systems far from Earth. The distances involved and communications lags present with Earth-based control centers will induce a necessary autonomy never before experienced in Human Spaceflight. Working more autonomously, these astronauts will need to be keenly aware of external situations, internal status and health of spacecraft systems, and options for dealing with faulty equipment and off-nominal situations. Crews will also have to understand how the spacecraft automation is to be used in light of the current mission situation, and how to trade off operational objectives as necessary to use the automation effectively. An Intelligent Astronaut Associate (IAA) has the potential to enhance the ability of astronaut crews to work more efficiently, to cope with uncertainty and to address the unique challenges outlined above. This paper describes an initial implementation of the IAA which would provide an intelligent automation interface to the astronaut crew, dynamically providing relevant real-time information, while monitoring cognitive state and workload to determine how best to present pertinent information to the crew. The IAA would also include knowledge-based reasoning capability, and cockpit technologies such as integrated alerting and notification, presented via a task driven, intuitive, consistent natural language for interfacing with the automation.