The Role of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in Crewed Mars Missions

The suggestion of implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in crewed missions to the Martian surface can revolutionize mission operations, psychological support, and ethical decision‑making under challenging conditions. This study is a structured, qualitative literature review of current AI research for the future of human space exploration. It uses publicly available peer‑reviewed journal articles and NASA/ESA technical reports on AI for Mars missions. Using Perplexity, the researcher first prompted the AI tool to identify recurring topics across these sources and generate themes. The researcher independently reviewed all sources to confirm and refine those themes. Three themes—mission autonomy, local resource utilization and life‑support, and crew well‑being/ethics—were ultimately adopted because they are relevant to proposed crewed Mars expeditions. Within this framework, the study examines AI‑based technologies such as trajectory prediction and redundancy for landing safety, Internet of Things (IoT) enabled smart habitats, In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) systems for water and oxygen, and automated waste and life‑support systems that reduce dependence on ground monitoring, thereby improving mission autonomy and decision-making within the mission timeline. Together, these findings are synthesized into a conceptual framework that explains how ethically constrained AI collaborates with astronauts and mission controllers to enhance autonomy, sustainability, and psychological resilience in deep‑space missions.