Tech Talk: AI in Space
Space is hard. Consider the last two SpaceX Starship launches in November and April; both exploded. In January, a misaligned fuel valve caused Virgin Orbit’s second stage to be starved for fuel, the launch failed, and shortly thereafter Virgin Orbit went bankrupt. Successful space missions are numerous—2,474 satellites were successfully launched in 2022—but tricky. The key seems to be getting the right recipe for all the complexities and then repeating it exactly. That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes into play. Space is also expensive, which makes the hefty cost of AI tolerable. The satellite launch vehicle market was $14.4 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at an annual rate of more than 12.5% between 2023 and 2032, according to Global Market Insights. That works out to about $5.8 million per satellite, and that’s just the launch. The manufacturing costs of satellites dwarf the cost of launching them. A spy satellite costs around $100 million, a weather satellite upwards of $300 million, and government and military satellites can cost from $500 million to $2 billion. So, at a couple of million dollars, even a significant machine learning (ML) project is worth it. AI has been used for space exploration by NASA for years. It is estimated that the space agency spends $200 million on AI each year. The most famous use case is probably the Mars rover. NASA also has used the technology for spacecraft operations, spacecraft health, on-board image processing, and land-based data processing. For a broad introduction to AI/ML, consider reading our Tech Talk on AI, and for an overview of tech trends in 2024 (including AI and Space), see our Top 10 Tech Trends in 2024. Links in our full report.
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