It's a reasonable question based on a real observation, in an opinion piece on SpaceNews. The piece is written by Justin du Plessis, who is identified as the Attitude and Orbit Control Systems Lead at Space Machines Company.
Think of autonomous spacecraft as the space equivalent of self-driving cars. For a decade, we’ve watched autonomous vehicles navigate our roads. Yet remarkably, despite the technology being available for years, fully autonomous spacecraft remain largely theoretical. This technological conservatism isn’t due to capability limitations — it’s driven by understandable risk aversion.
It seems to me that part of the answer to that lies in the direction we saw test flown from Starbase yesterday. Drop the costs of access to space. It has been dropping for several years, now, primarily led by SpaceX, of course, as well as by Rocket Lab and a few others. We don't have to look farther than lunar probes that didn't succeed at landing autonomously to realize that lower cost launches themselves doesn't solve everything; they just reduce the cost of mission failure and replacement.
Then I ran into the quote that pretty much led to this being tonight's topic. In 2005, 20 years ago, NASA flew a mission called Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technologies. That mission failed to meet any of its objectives.
Traditional spacecraft Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) require continuous communication between ground control and the vehicle. In Low Earth Orbit, this communication is only possible during brief 10-minute windows every 90 minutes. The remaining 80 minutes? Complete blackout.
...
The industry’s current solution? Expensive satellite communication relays and 24/7 teams of engineers ready to respond instantly. This approach simply doesn’t scale for the constellation era, where we envision hundreds of satellites working in unison.
du Plessis advances the idea that the space industry has reached an inflection point where the requirements are beginning to outpace traditional control methods. As satellite constellations grow larger and missions become more complex, autonomy shifts from luxury to necessity. The issue becomes exactly how that can be done, and he advances his own preferences, which is to be expected.
Certainly, I don't think it's reasonable to try to launch a system like this until it's reasonably considered to be "fail safe." That is, unlikely to do something hazardous when faced with a situation outside its ability to respond. He advocates for "rigorous ground testing followed by incremental in-space validation. Advanced test facilities — where zero gravity motion and the harsh conditions of space can be replicated in controlled on-ground test environments – provide crucial stepping stones between simulation and actual deployment." He sees roles for both the government and the universities along with the private space industry. Given the various governments of the world's track records on innovation in the last 40 years or so, I think the leaders should be the satellite and space industries.
Illustration of Space Machines Company's Optimus Viper rapid-response
spacecraft variant. Image credit: Space Machines Company
With reduced launch costs, satellite and probe builders can quit trying to make everything as small as possible, and build in multi-redundant systems. That will help fix some of the issues.
ReplyDeleteAs to autonomous systems, yes, that would be nice. Autonomous landings, autonomous travelling from point to point, with override available from 'home.'
Would be nice.
Read a piece over the weekend, had to do with an outfit, who have put in orbit the first of a constelation of interconnected AI sats, which they intend for these AI sats to be able to create a synchronize orbit mesh, because they are saying in space somehow it enables very high speed operation. Didn't quite understand what was written on that score, but they were very excited they would have this super quantum AI, something about limitless solar power and speed of light connectivity within the AI sat mesh.
ReplyDeleteTo me it all sounds rather sinister. Ni words regarding its use or who is behind it, a lot of fancy talking, glamorous even. Somebody not saying somethings be my gut sense. Strikes me as a lot of work and money, and another thing is this holy grail of quantum AI. I think they need it for control of something which requires inordinnate amounts of computing power, my guess is they are trying to set up a global monetary system which governs all monetary activity, because control equals power, snd what do men with money and power want, right, more money and power. I can just imagine a super quantum federal reserve thru which all taxes and banking of all countries on earth go, one central control point, it all quantum digital.
Thats my thoughts and conjecture anyways. It was only a matter of time it seems.0
I think the key there is in that part about "limitless solar power." Remember the post earlier in May about the power requirements for AI that nobody is talking about.
DeleteThe "speed of light" connectivity is just a buzzword. Any radio signal is at the speed of light. Cables slow it down to around 70% of c, but that's all.
As for what they need the AI for, why is the push for AI so big now? Like all new innovations, it's hot because it's new.
Must be why laser coms are the thing, like with some Starlink sats. Far as I understand its how they can use coherent light frequencies to transmit exorbitant amounts of data in brief time frames.
DeleteAnother piece few days ago was about how much AI was using in terms of power from the national grid, and it was competitive and projected to exceed such industries as aluminum and steel production. Thats serious draw.
There was some university work going on in mid 90's, they where using rather small sections of quartz if i remember, oblong pieces like 12mm x 4, upon these "coupons" they somehow embedded within the crystal, using various laser frequencies, potentially far more data than using silicon based data storage. It was very interesting. Seems it has not shown up far as I know, maybe you've some knowledge of this future tech, from the article it was potentially quite a step in computing power, plus the aspect that the data stored was very robust with little that could destroy that saved data because it was etched into the crystal.
I think, certainly conjecture on my part, ultimately it has to do with power, simply, and the goal of quantum computer technology the highest goal. In the present not much gets such investment if it is not something the globalist gang is into, which appears to be about global financial control and if course inordinate levels of wealth acquisition. They do seem to be who are behind much goings on these days. From that standpoint AI would be the natural direction in the present technological sense.
"Must be why laser coms are the thing, like with some Starlink sats. Far as I understand its how they can use coherent light frequencies to transmit exorbitant amounts of data in brief time frames."
DeleteRemember: "Engineering is the Art of Compromise" There is no ideal solution for every radio problem just like there's no ideal tire for a car to go from perfect race track conditions to sand dunes. Everything has strong points and weak points. Things it's better for and things it's worse for.
The attraction of lasers is that the wavelength is tiny - billionths of a meter (nanometers) while even microwaves are thousandths of a meter (millimeters). What that means is the beamwidth of a microwave antenna is going to be thousands of times wider than a laser. You've seen the dot of a laser pointer "a couple" of thousandths of an inch. The width of the radio beam is given in feet instead of thousandths. That means the laser is less likely to be intercepted by an unintended audience, or to cause interference to another user and less likely to be wasted energy.
(Lasers produce coherent light which is like radio. That's why lasers aren't wide like searchlights.)
Thats a seriously narrow focus path if its down nanometers, no wonder they are engineering methods and equipment, guess thats a no brainer if you have good tech for it.
DeleteBeware that while the wavelength is nanometers (the typical red Neon laser is 632 nm - "optical" is usually specified as 550 nm, smaller than that red, because it's greenish color), that's not the beamwidth, which is going to diverge with distance. I don't know enough about the systems to say what the laser's spot would be in their use, just that it's got to be smaller than a radio antenna beamwidth. And, yeah, that absolutely means more accurate pointing of the satellites is needed, on both ends.
DeleteI didn't mean to imply the beamwidth was that wide, just the light waves are that long.
With an average lifespan of 15 years of a satellite, when is it going to be cost effective to collect the out of service satellites to recycle them? There is a lot of space junk in the satellite belt.
ReplyDeleteNASA likes centralized micromanagement because NASA *is* centralized micromanagement.
ReplyDeleteDuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't even perfected self-driving trains, which have only three choices in an X/Y two-dimensional universe:
forward, backwards, and stop.
Thats just too easy! (if its a .gov run train that is).
DeleteTalking about lasers. Brief V-clip of a battlefield ready combat lazer blowing holes in half inch steel plate and shooting down drones and cruise missiles. Impressive.
ReplyDeletehttps://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/05/russian-combat.html?m=1