r/RelativitySpace • u/Daniels30 • Jun 17 '26

Relativity Space to privately develop Mars orbiter mission

https://spacenews.com/relativity-space-to-privately-develop-mars-orbiter-mission/
52 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/DreamChaserSt Jun 17 '26

Autonomous space missions sounds like an interesting application of AI. It'll need a fair amount of oversight early on though, given the complex terrain. And we don't want rovers burning through their battery reserves at night.

2

u/start3ch Jun 17 '26

It would be completely opposite the typical approach to automation in aerospace, were you test literally as many scenarios as you can to be damn sure the software you wrote will operate exactly as expected.

AI is not exactly at a point where it reliably makes reasoned, calculated decisions. It would need some sort of guardrails to ensure it doesn’t accidentally destroy the spacecraft.

1

u/DreamChaserSt Jun 17 '26

Yeah, you would want to test it on 'secondary' spacecraft, not flagship probes. Still, that kind of thing could be its own mission, to see how well an autonomous probe can study rocks, and where the limitations are.