Humans are going places. NASA's newest plan is to launch crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s, and we'll need the most advanced and reliable space technology to help get us there safe and sound.

That's where HAL 9000 – the villainous, insane killbot from 2001: A Space Odyssey – comes in. Believe it or not, sci-fi's most notorious murder machine was the inspirational basis for a new HAL-like cognitive computer system designed to autonomously run planetary space stations for real one day.