The last addition At the Tiangong space station in China is an AI chatbot with expertise in navigation and tactical planning. Named Wukong AI – After the protagonist of the legend of the “monkey king” of Chinese mythology, Sun Wukong – The chatbot was presented on the space station in mid -July, and has already finished its first mission: supporting three taikonauts during a Spacewalk.
Information on Wukong AI remains limited. Chinese authorities said they had developed it from a national open source model; According to Xinhua, the Chinese public news agency, the engineers designed it to meet the requirements of inhabited space missions and concentrated its knowledge base on aerospace flight data.
“This system can provide rapid and effective support for complex operations and handling defects by crew members, improving work efficiency, psychological support in orbit and coordination between space and soil teams,” Zou Pengfei told Taikonaut Training Center in Xinhua.
The technicians connected the AI to Tiangong on July 15. He started providing support a month later, which is the first time that the Chinese space station has used a large language model (LLM) during orbit missions. Wukong AI helped the crew on a six -hour and a half -hour mission, which involved the installation taikonauts for space debris protection devices during a walk in space and carry out a routine inspection of the station.
The Taikonauts say that their new assistant “offers very complete content”. The Chinese media describe Wukong AI as a classic system of questions and answers divided into two modules: one installed on the station and one on earth. The soil module performs an in -depth analysis, while the module accompanying the crew solves the immediate challenges. The combination of the two creates an advanced assistant capable of adapting to each mission.
Wukong is neither the first AI system in space nor the first of a station. The international space station has already Astrobee, a robot that helps astronauts with routine tasks, and Cimon, a conversational psychological support system. The particularity of Wukong AI is that it combines the functions of an intelligent assistant – like those used on earth – with total accent on space navigation.
Tiangong station is at the heart of China’s strategy to consolidate its space power position over the next 30 years. The station is currently used as a microgravity laboratory for experiences that would be impossible on earth. In the future, China plans to extend it and transform it into a logistics and intermediate formation platform between the moon and the surface of the earth.
And the reason for the name of AI? Sun Wukong is a mythical person who appears in the classic novel Trip to the west. In China, it symbolizes cunning, adaptability, endurance and the pursuit of knowledge.
This story originally appeared on Spanish searched and was translated from Spanish.
