ESA uses AI to search for life on Mars

DARMSTADT, Germany, April 29 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency says it's using artificial intelligence to assist its Mars Express spacecraft as it searches for signs of life on Mars.

Since January 2005, Mars Express has been generating huge volumes of scientific data, which it downloads to Earth. Traditionally, data downloading was managed using human-operated scheduling software to generate command sequences sent to Mars Express, telling it when to sent specific data packets.

"This is tedious, time-consuming and never really eliminated the occasional loss -- forever -- of valuable science data," said Alessandro Donati, chief of the advanced mission concepts and technologies office at the ESA's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.

But now an artificial intelligence tool created at Italy's Institute for Cognitive Science and Technology -- called MEXAR2 -- is an integral part of the Mars Express mission planning system.

MEXAR2 works by intelligently projecting which on-board data packets might be lost due to memory conflicts, optimizing the download schedule and generating the commands needed to implement the download.

"Today's achievement is the starting point for implementing new on-board autonomy concepts for ESA's challenging missions of the future," said Donati.