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Advancing Intelligent Personal Assistants for Human Spaceflight

Authors Leonie Bensch , Oliver Bensch , Tommy Nilsson

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI
  • Computing methodologies → Intelligent agents
Keywords
  • Conversational Assistant
  • Intelligent Personal Assistant
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Astronaut
  • Human Spaceflight
  • Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT)
  • Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • Knowledge Graphs
  • Augmented Reality
  • Voice Assistant
  • Long Duration Spaceflight

Metrics

Abstract

The Artemis program and upcoming missions to Mars mark a new era of human space exploration that will require new tools to support astronaut autonomy in the absence of real-time communication with Earth. This paper investigates the role of voice-based intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) in future crewed space missions. Through semi-structured interviews with astronauts (n=3) and spaceflight experts (n=12), we identify key user-centered design requirements for IPAs in this uniquely constrained and safety-critical environment. Our thematic analysis reveals core requirements for flexibility, reliability, offline capability, and multimodal interaction. Drawing on these findings, we outline design guidelines for next-generation IPAs and discuss how technologies such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), knowledge graphs, and augmented reality should be combined to support flexible, reliable, and multimodal IPAs for future human spaceflight missions.

Cite As Get BibTex

Leonie Bensch, Oliver Bensch, and Tommy Nilsson. Advancing Intelligent Personal Assistants for Human Spaceflight. In Advancing Human-Computer Interaction for Space Exploration (SpaceCHI 2025). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 130, pp. 18:1-18:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.SpaceCHI.2025.18

Author Details

Leonie Bensch
  • (MIT) Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Oliver Bensch
  • Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany
Tommy Nilsson
  • European Space Agency (ESA), Cologne, Germany

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