Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Smart Home
  3. News

NASA collaborates with Amazon’s Alexa to answer all your questions about Mars

Lulu Chang
By

nasa amazon alexa skill opportunity mer b or 1 mars mission roundup
NASA
You’ve got questions and Alexa’s got answers. Now, in addition to news about the weather, traffic, football scores, and other earthly information Amazon’s smart assistant can offer, she will also start educating you on … grander topics. Specifically, those concerned with Mars. It’s all thanks to NASA, which announced at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas that it had added its own skill to the popular artificial intelligence-based assistant, marking the first time the space agency collaborated with Alexa.

Tom Soderstrom, the chief technology officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, unveiled Alexa’s newest skill, noting the impetus behind the decision was to spark further interest in Mars. Of course, it would seem that there is interest aplenty already — after all, Elon Musk is trying to colonize the Red Planet, which no longer seems like as far fetched of a dream as it might have just a few years ago.

Recommended Videos

“Tomorrow you’ll be able to use Amazon Dots and your Amazon Echos, and you can ask questions about Mars,” Soderstrom said Tuesday. “This is all about exploring and getting crowdsourcing and getting people to understand and care about Mars and ask new questions.”

Related

While Alexa already has some basic knowledge about Mars (thanks, Google), the NASA skill certainly broadens (and deepens) its knowledge base. Once users have enabled the NASA Mars skill, they can make requests like, “Alexa, open NASA Mars,” or, “Alexa, ask NASA Mars: Why is Mars red?”

But that is not all NASA has in the works when it comes to Alexa. Soderstrom suggested that ROV-E, a smaller version of NASA’s exploration rover whose blueprints will be made widely accessible to schools and museums, will also be controllable by way of Alexa commands and capable of answering your most probing questions about one of our nearest celestial neighbors.

So get curious — there has never been a better time to have questions about the universe.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lulu Chang
Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
NASA marks a year since Mars drone’s historic first flight
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA’s team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California is celebrating one year since its plucky Ingenuity helicopter became the first aircraft to achieve controlled, powered flight on another planet.

Ingenuity's maiden flight took place on April 19, 2021, and the team marked occasion by sharing a video showing that special moment 12 months ago when news came through that the drone-like aircraft had successfully performed its record-breaking first flight:

Read more
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter sets new flight records on Mars
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA’s space helicopter has set two new flight records on Mars.

During what the mission team described as Ingenuity’s “most ambitious flight” among its 25 trips to date, the 4-pound, 19-inch-high helicopter flew a distance of 2,324.2 feet (708.4 meters), smashing its previous record of 2,072.8 feet (631.8 meters) by 251.4 feet (76.6 meters).

Read more
NASA’s Mars helicopter will fly furthest yet in next flight
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

In the year since NASA’s Mars helicopter first hovered above the martian surface to become the only aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet, Ingenuity has taken 23 additional flights.

Now the mission team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is prepping the 4-pound, 19-inch-high helicopter for a record-breaking flight of 704 meters, a distance that will smash its current record by 77 meters.

Read more