TWiS 159: AI in Space! - USRA's Dr. Bell on Robots, Rovers, and Autonomous Frontiers - podcast episode cover

TWiS 159: AI in Space! - USRA's Dr. Bell on Robots, Rovers, and Autonomous Frontiers

This Week in Space (Audio)
May 02, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 159
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Episode description

Seems we can't go through an hour without hearing news about artificial intelligence these days. There are a lot of exciting developments, and some of the most exciting when thinking about space are coming from the USRA's Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS), which is on the cutting edge of the cutting edge. In this episode, we're speaking with the institute's director, Dr. David Bell, who will walk us through the differences between current AI, agentic AI, and--are you ready?--quantum-powered AI, and their current and future potential to revolutionize space exploration and development. Join us!

Headlines

  • Trump budget cuts: The Trump administration's fiscal 2026 "skinny" budget proposes slashing NASA's funding by $6 billion—24 % of its current $24.8 billion—threatening SLS, Orion, Gateway, and Mars Sample Return programs.
  • Planet 9 revival: Scientists re-examining 1980s IRAS and 2006–2011 Akari infrared data have uncovered new gravitational signatures suggesting a hidden Planet 9 at ~700 AU, bringing the search closer to confirmation.
  • Speed-round catch-up: NASA's Psyche asteroid mission is battling low fuel pressure; the decades-old Soviet Cosmos 42 Venus probe is slated to re-enter around May 10; and a recent poll finds over half of Gen Z and millennials believe in alien cover-ups.

Main Topic – AI in Space with Dr. David Bell

  • USRA & QuAIL overview: Dr. Bell outlines USRA's Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) and its Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab—a collaboration with Google and NASA Ames driving AI and quantum computing integration in space missions
  • Career path & pivotal shifts: With 20+ years at USRA and a prior decade at Xerox PARC, Bell traces AI's journey from 1959's first neural nets to the 2017 transformer breakthrough that sparked today's LLM revolution.
  • Early AI successes: AutoClass's unsupervised learning on the 1980s IRAS mission discovered a new class of infrared stars, and ExoMiner's deep-learning engine has since validated over 300 exoplanets from Kepler data.
  • Agent-based autonomy: USRA deployed mobile agents on the ISS to automate file transfers and Deep Space One's Remote Agent performed onboard planning, execution, and anomaly recovery in deep space during the 1990s.
  • Evolution of planning & scheduling: The Europa planning engine—used daily for Mars rovers—has evolved into SPIFe (Spiffy) and real-time collaborative "playbook" apps, optimizing workflows on both robotic and crewed missions.
  • Natural language interfaces: Clarissa, a precursor to Siri deployed on the ISS five years before commercial voice assistants, let astronauts query and navigate complex procedures by voice.
  • Robotic assistants: Projects like Astrobee free-flying robots on the ISS and analog-terrain rover simulations demonstrate how AI-driven machines can support astronauts in exploration and maintenance tasks.
  • Foundation models for Earth & space: USRA's Generative AI Lab is building multipurpose foundation models on global satellite data that now outperform traditional numerical simulations—forecasting weather faster and more accurately.
  • Workforce development: Through the Feynman Quantum Academy and NASA-integrated data science curricula, USRA immerses students

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space/episodes/159

Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik

Guest: Dr. David Bell

Transcript

Primary Navigation Podcasts Club Blog Subscribe Sponsors More… Tech Beyond HAL: Trustworthy AI for Deep Space

May 7th 2025

AI-generated, human-edited.

Artificial intelligence has been woven into NASA missions for more than four decades, but—as listeners learned in This Week in Space episode 159—the field is now racing into an era where quantum chips, massive language models, and free‑flying robots could become everyday crewmates. Guest Dr. David Bell, director of the Universities Space Research Association’s Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) and program manager for the joint NASA‑Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, joined hosts Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik to unpack that journey—from early neural‑net triumphs to tomorrow's sentient‑seeming assistants.

From Xerox PARC to Quantum Labs

Bell traced his 30‑year career: a decade at Xerox PARC studying AI for science and engineering, followed by two decades running RIACS at NASA Ames, where USRA bridges academia, government, and industry on cutting‑edge computing research. The institute's charter—set in 1983 when U.S. space policy singled out super‑computing, user interfaces, and AI as critical for exploration—still shapes its mandate today.

The First "Smart" Discoveries

AI's space résumé dates to the unsupervised AutoClass algorithm that sifted data from the IRAS infrared telescope satellite in the 1980s and revealed an entirely new kind of star. Bell's team later evolved those ideas into ExoMiner, a deep‑learning tool that confirmed more than 300 exoplanets with explainable reasoning—evidence that AI methods are maturing from a black‑box curiosity to a trustworthy scientific partner.

Agents, Schedulers, and Voice Assistants

While public hype centers on chatbots, Bell highlighted "agentic" AI already embedded in mission control:

Mission‑planning engines such as Europa, Spiffy, and the collaborative Playbook app balance available power, timing, and science goals for Mars rovers.Mobile agents on the ISS have autonomously moved files between station and ground so humans can focus on higher‑value tasks.Remote Agent on Deep Space One handled onboard scheduling, execution, and anomaly recovery—diagnosing simulated thruster and sensor failures millions of miles from Earth.Clarissa, a rudimentary vocal procedure helper on the ISS, proved natural‑language interfaces could ease astronaut workload years before programs like Siri debuted.

The hosts asked Bell when AI will graduate from back‑room helper to onboard companion. He argued that advances in large language models—accelerated since the 2017 transformer breakthrough—mark an inflection point, enabling more conversational, context‑aware systems. Free‑flying Astrobee robots already roam the station, and future iterations could act on spoken requests while handling routine inspections or repairs.

Quantum Speedup and the Next Frontier

Bell detailed NASA‑USRA‑Google milestones that show quantum hardware is no longer science fiction. A quantum annealer solved an optimization problem 100 times faster than a million classical CPUs, demonstrating raw "speedup," and later gate‑model experiments achieved "quantum supremacy," outrunning top supercomputers on tasks they could never finish in a practical time span. The team's goal now is true "quantum advantage"—applying that power to real mission puzzles such as trajectory design or large‑scale scheduling.

Guardrails and Trust

Rod and Tariq raised the classic HAL‑9000 worry: how to keep ever‑smarter systems from going rogue. Bell emphasized that today's flight software is given narrowly defined authorities, and NASA's rigorous systems‑engineering and risk‑management culture is expanding to cover AI behaviors as capabilities grow.

Building Tomorrow's Workforce

Beyond research, USRA runs programs like the Feynman Quantum Academy and university data science curricula that immerse students in NASA open data and algorithms, ensuring a talent pipeline ready for AI‑driven exploration.

Looking Ahead

Bell envisions AI not only steering spacecraft but supporting astronauts' mental well‑being on lengthy voyages—think a personable TARS from Interstellar rather than a sterile dashboard widget. With quantum processors accelerating optimization and foundation models digesting petabytes of Earth‑observation data in minutes, the pace of innovation is poised to leap again—and RIACS is actively seeking new partners to push that frontier.

Ready for More?

This overview only scratches the surface. Catch the full conversation—including headline chatter about NASA's budget battle and the revived Planet 9 hunt—by listening to This Week in Space episode 159 on your favorite podcast app.

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May 2 2025 - AI in Space!
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