The register

CIMON, the astronaut assistant

Talked with an astronaut on the station, with the understanding of speech done on Earth over a satellite link.

OperatorGerman Aerospace Center (DLR)
DeveloperAirbus, with IBM
HostInternational Space Station
Wherespoken to on the space station, answered from Earth
Classlanguage
Hardwarea free-flying device on the station; the language AI ran in IBM's cloud on Earth
Model or softwareIBM Watson
Launchednot applicable
Ran15 November 2018

What was said, and by whom

  1. “CIMON uses the Wi-Fi on the ISS to transmit data, making use of satellite connections to ground stations to establish an internet connection with the IBM Cloud.”

    Airbus: the developer. Crew assistant CIMON successfully completes first tasks in space, Airbus. Published 16 Nov 2018 (date given in search results; the release itself describes 15 November 2018). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: three sentences of 7,700 characters. Read from an Internet Archive capture of the page.

  2. “The heart of the AI for understanding speech is the IBM Watson system.”

    German Aerospace Center (DLR): the operator. CIMON: astronaut assistance system, German Aerospace Center (DLR). Published 8 Jun 2018 (page metadata). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: one sentence of 2,900 characters.

Notes

Beside the register, like the drives planned for Perseverance: an AI used in space whose model ran on Earth. Whether any of its software ran a model on the device itself was not looked into.

Changed

Added beside the register on 4 October 2026.

Cite or share

CIMON, the astronaut assistant. Every AI that has run above the Kármán line, graded by evidence. Reviewed 4 Oct 2026. https://karman-si.pages.dev/r/cimon/

Address: https://karman-si.pages.dev/r/cimon/

Kármán register: beside the register A badge with this record's marks, at /badge/cimon.svg. This record as data.