Intelligent Satellite Notices Volcanic Activity

Dik Zak points us to this NASA page about a new generation of intelligent Earth observation satellites. From the article: "The Indonesian volcano Talang on the island of Sumatra had been dormant for centuries when, in April 2005, it suddenly rumbled to life. A plume of smoke rose 1000 meters high and nearby villages were covered in ash. Fearing a major eruption, local authorities began evacuating 40,000 people. UN officials, meanwhile, issued a call for help: Volcanologists should begin monitoring Talang at once. Little did they know that, high above Earth, a small satellite was already watching the volcano. No one had told it to. EO-1 (short for "Earth Observing 1") noticed the warning signs and started monitoring Talang on its own. Indeed, by the time many volcanologists were reading their emails from the UN, 'EO-1 already had data,' says Steve Chien, leader of JPL's Artificial Intelligence Group."

Comments

Re:...but did it tell anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's the first thing that came to my mind: this would have been _really_ awesome if the satellite notified someone that some parameter was outside it's usual range. SNMP would be kool here (Space Network Monitoring Protocol). Seriously, that would be real intelligence. Of course, this might not be doable because of a number of false alarms, or other technical details. Does someone around here have some insight in this ?

(posting anonymously because I modded parent up)

Re:...but did it tell anyone?

[tqk]

Did the satellite tell anyone it noticed anything? That's important too.

It's enough that it stored its observations. I consider the little creature bloody brilliant and look forward to its further adventures.