Through the lens of science fiction works like Star Trek, one can easily get the impression the first crews that venture into the cold of interstellar space — defined as “the place where the sun’s constant flow of material and magnetic field stop affecting its surroundings” — will be tight-knight teams of humans who have a robust support system assisting them on Earth. The truth, however, is far from that — humans who travel into space will be more-or-less on their own, and will have to think of solutions to any problems that arise using their own wits and mental prowess.
Well, not quite. There is one support system that will be around to help human beings in their time of need: Artificial intelligence.
When you get further away from Earth, the ability to communicate rapidly with ground control is lost. Even when humans land on Mars, there will be a lag in communications of about 45 minutes.
Now, imagine the reaches or deep space, interstellar space outside our solar system, that dwarf the distance to Mars. The communication lag is — to put it technically — humongous. A crew that jets off to worlds unknown is indefinitely on its own.
“People have been studying an interstellar mission for quite some time,” Steve Chien, the technical group supervisor for the Artificial Intelligence Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, tells Inverse. “It’s just very hard to get to another star, let’s say, four-and-a-half, five light years away,” he says, referencing the nearby star system Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri. Scientists believe there’s a good chance there is a potentially habitable world sitting somewhere in this region.
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