Spacecraft autonomy and the missions of exploration

Artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners are now gaining significant opportunities to make a valuable contribution to NASA's space program. In particular, AI is being integrated into work aiming to design, develop, deploy and evaluate autonomy capabilities for space platforms. AI has the potential to cut costs across the entire NASA mission lifecycle. This is particularly the case with model-based techniques. However, the higher strategic value of spacecraft autonomy may lie in other areas.