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The exponential growth of commercial activity in space is stimulating the development of artificial intelligence applications for the space domain. One of the first entry points is in the ground control of satellite constellations. Generally, every active satellite in Earth orbit has a ground operations center that monitors its health, solves problems, commands orbital adjustments, and other housekeeping activities. Traditionally, the number of staff required scales upward with the size of the constellation. AI tools are being applied to this environment to allow a small number of people to effectively manage larger and larger constellations. Over time, we will see initial processing of the data collected by the spacecraft processed on orbit via edge computing in order to manage the massive amount of information being generated before its transmission to the ground. AI tools will also become useful for this task. For national security purposes, autonomy will be important to blunt the potential effects of interrupted communications during a conflict in space. Artificial intelligence will play a key role in making military systems resilient to this threat.

Quantum technology is already in space, and it is easy to understand why more will be coming. It is harder, though, to appreciate that quantum technology will ultimately become ubiquitous in space and elsewhere, why this is so, and what it will take to get there. Anderson will address both the easy and the hard. He will speak primarily about atom-based quantum technology because it is what he knows the best; the underlying value of quantum technology, though, is more about the nature of quantum mechanics than it is about how it is made manifest, while the choice of modality is significantly embedded in practical considerations.

As a harbinger of the near future, consider that today’s laboratory (quantum) timekeepers are over a million times more precise than the world timekeeping clocks at NIST and elsewhere around the globe. If you are new to the world of timekeeping, you will be amazed at the breadth of applications of high-performance timing systems, including better positioning and navigation, synchronization within energy grids, secure communication, enabling coherence among distributed sensors for both civil and national security purposes and so on. It is fair, even if overhyped, to ultimately expect decades of performance headroom for other applications of quantum sensors, such as inertial sensors for navigation, gravity sensors for mineral exploration around the moon and asteroids, and detection of radio-frequency signals. In the case of atoms, exquisite sensitivity has been enabled by laser cooling techniques that have made temperatures close to absolute zero routine. At these temperatures, thermal noise is largely eliminated, leaving quantum noise as the performance limitation. Yet it is not just low noise that makes quantum technology compelling; it also provides a means for quantum signal processing and information processing that cannot be done classically.Ìý