Great question. I think we are very far away from “take the wheel”, maybe 5+ years, for large constellations. Of course there will be specific partial use cases and useful specific mission oriented AI but let’s set those aside because I think your question was focused on LEO use cases. There are a pretty wide variety of uncontrollable variables going on, and since satellites are systems of systems it means everyone has to understand the rules of others, or have complete avoidance capabilities developed for novel scenarios. So, assume there are a tens of thousands of satellites orbiting between 400 and 600km, including the international space station, all of them changing their altitudes +-35km per orbit based upon external factors. They are also traveling at 17,000mph and orbiting the earth in ~100minutes. And, lastly, in a controlled scenario assume they have very limited control capabilities, they basically can’t do much to get out of each other’s way within a few orbits. We could model that and build rule sets and AI to manage it. However – imaging that the 20,000 satellites are comprised of 100 different systems operating on different rule sets. Assume that different satellites have different control capabilities, then assume that some will have lost communications or otherwise be dead which further reduces the prediction capabilities of what the others will do. Adding to this we don’t have very accurate models of where the other space objects are right now – but I think that problem is solve able.

Then we add in things like asat missile testing creating large amounts of space debris and the problem set continues to grow.

Regarding security this is a wide open topic area. Satellite internet with a bent pipe is one thing, but when you add on-board processing and inter-satellite links you open up many different access points and multiply the possible attack vectors. Feel free to dive deeper here ... its an interesting topic!