Artificial intelligence may have a bigger presence in future space missions

What they did: The SDO instrument in question is known as MEGS-A, and it was designed to keep an eye on ultraviolet radiation levels, which correlate with a ballooning of the Earth's outer atmosphere that can harm satellites in near-Earth orbit. A deep-learning network that researchers at NASA Frontier Development Lab created with help from IBM, SETI, and Nimbix in 2018 may soon replace the failed instrument by inferring what ultraviolet radiation levels that instrument would detect based on what the other instruments on SDO are observing at any given time, NASA AI consultant Graham Mackintosh tells Axios. While NASA isn't yet using the fix operationally, the results are promising, Mackintosh added. What to watch: AI models like this could also be used for other future missions, Mackintosh said. Instead of loading 3 instruments on a satellite to measure different aspects of the space environment, you could potentially launch two and use the data collected to infer the information that would have been measured by a third.