Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth satellite (about 500 km in diameter). It is so small that it is only 4% of the size of Earth. Beneath the 10 km thick ice layer on the satellite’s surface, there is a liquid ocean. This is why it is nicknamed ‘Saturn’s Water Tank’. Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered a giant plume of water vapor nearly 10,000 km long on the surface of Enceladus. It is 20 times the diameter of Enceladus. Saturn’s powerful gravity stirs up water beneath Enceladus’ ice layers. Hot frictional heat is expected to be generated. It is expected to create an environment in which life can be born, like deep-sea hydrothermal vents on Earth. This is why scientists are paying attention to Enceladus in connection with the search for life in space.
Currently, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is planning to apply artificial intelligence (AI) ‘agent’ to the exploration of Enceladus. This is a method that deploys eight small spacecraft in Enceladus orbit and allows AI to analyze and respond to data collected from water columns in real time on site. Delays that occur while sending commands from Earth to Saturn and receiving results back can be prevented. A robot lander equipped with AI is also scheduled to be sent as early as the late 2030s. It is designed to find cracks between ice layers on its own and slide into the water. In addition, NASA is continuously finding ways to apply AI to Mars exploration rover attitude control and lunar manned space station construction projects.
There are limits to controlling a spacecraft traveling to stars hundreds of millions of kilometers away from Earth from Earth. It is nearly impossible for humans to analyze the numerous data collected across the vast space and time of the universe. Designing spacecraft to suit different missions and environments, as well as manufacturing tens of thousands of parts for different purposes for each spacecraft, are beyond the power of human intelligence alone. This is the background for space development organizations around the world, including NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and China National Aviation Administration (CNSA), to rush to invest in AI. As science fiction novelist William Gibson puts it, ‘The future is already here. It’s just not widespread.’
If you narrow your view from Saturn to Earth, or from the world to Korea, you can see this clearly. This future has not yet arrived in Korea. The reality is that there has not yet been a proper government agency in charge of space development.
It has already been a year since the Korea Economic Daily exclusively reported that the Ministry of Science and ICT had prepared a draft of a special law for the Aerospace Administration. However, the Korea Aerospace Administration, which was aiming to open within the year, has no promises even after the end of the year due to the director’s status only at the vice-ministerial level, whether the agency will be directly subordinate to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, and differences of opinion on conducting direct research and development (R&D). I have also never heard of any development of AI to be applied to space exploration. A country that cannot pioneer space and, moreover, fails to utilize AI properly, will have no choice but to remain a second-rate country chasing advanced countries forever. Who will take responsibility later? Still, the National Assembly is relaxed. This is why I am afraid of the word ‘peak Korea’ appearing in foreign media.
As a member of Hankyung’s 60th anniversary special task force team, I covered research and development (R&D) trends in AI and space around the world. He pondered in an academic sense what kind of future he should envision in the next 60 years. Futurology is a branch of social science that draws a blueprint for the future after analyzing past historical facts and current data. We looked at the critical awareness and historical trends presented by previous journalists in the long past.
On the front page of the Korea Economic Daily, which celebrated its first anniversary on October 12, 1965, there was an editorial-style article summarizing the thoughts so far. <시야비야(是也非也)>was published. There is a sentence in the article that caught my eye. “The unit of time of 365 days, cut from the movement of nature, such as the Earth’s revolution, is not necessarily important. Thousands of years spent in vain are not worth a few rewarding days.” 2024 is the year when a new future opens when we wake up. We have entered a ‘Kairos’ era in which discontinuous changes appear in the ‘Chronos’ time flow that simply flows without dramatic change. It is time to have a sense of crisis that we must no longer fall behind in the race for space development using AI around the world.