AI will increasingly give spacecraft the ability to think for themselves.

The AI group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote the software that manages the schedule of Earth Observing-1, a satellite that looks for natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, wildfires and floods. It reprograms itself to image these targets and provide rapid response imagery of breaking science events.

Similar programming can be used for future planetary missions, perhaps for the next visit to Jupiter and its moons.