Large Language Models as Autonomous Spacecraft Operators in Kerbal Space Program

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Carrasco, Alejandro, Rodriguez-Fernandez, Victor, Linares, Richard
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915390560403456
author Carrasco, Alejandro
Rodriguez-Fernandez, Victor
Linares, Richard
author_facet Carrasco, Alejandro
Rodriguez-Fernandez, Victor
Linares, Richard
contents Recent trends are emerging in the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) as autonomous agents that take actions based on the content of the user text prompts. We intend to apply these concepts to the field of Control in space, enabling LLMs to play a significant role in the decision-making process for autonomous satellite operations. As a first step towards this goal, we have developed a pure LLM-based solution for the Kerbal Space Program Differential Games (KSPDG) challenge, a public software design competition where participants create autonomous agents for maneuvering satellites involved in non-cooperative space operations, running on the KSP game engine. Our approach leverages prompt engineering, few-shot prompting, and fine-tuning techniques to create an effective LLM-based agent that ranked 2nd in the competition. To the best of our knowledge, this work pioneers the integration of LLM agents into space research. The project comprises several open repositories to facilitate replication and further research. The codebase is accessible on \href{https://github.com/ARCLab-MIT/kspdg}{GitHub}, while the trained models and datasets are available on \href{https://huggingface.co/OhhTuRnz}{Hugging Face}. Additionally, experiment tracking and detailed results can be reviewed on \href{https://wandb.ai/carrusk/huggingface}{Weights \& Biases
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19896
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Large Language Models as Autonomous Spacecraft Operators in Kerbal Space Program
Carrasco, Alejandro
Rodriguez-Fernandez, Victor
Linares, Richard
Artificial Intelligence
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Computation and Language
Recent trends are emerging in the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) as autonomous agents that take actions based on the content of the user text prompts. We intend to apply these concepts to the field of Control in space, enabling LLMs to play a significant role in the decision-making process for autonomous satellite operations. As a first step towards this goal, we have developed a pure LLM-based solution for the Kerbal Space Program Differential Games (KSPDG) challenge, a public software design competition where participants create autonomous agents for maneuvering satellites involved in non-cooperative space operations, running on the KSP game engine. Our approach leverages prompt engineering, few-shot prompting, and fine-tuning techniques to create an effective LLM-based agent that ranked 2nd in the competition. To the best of our knowledge, this work pioneers the integration of LLM agents into space research. The project comprises several open repositories to facilitate replication and further research. The codebase is accessible on \href{https://github.com/ARCLab-MIT/kspdg}{GitHub}, while the trained models and datasets are available on \href{https://huggingface.co/OhhTuRnz}{Hugging Face}. Additionally, experiment tracking and detailed results can be reviewed on \href{https://wandb.ai/carrusk/huggingface}{Weights \& Biases
title Large Language Models as Autonomous Spacecraft Operators in Kerbal Space Program
topic Artificial Intelligence
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19896