The mission took place at LunAres Research Station, a globally recognized analog habitat, renowned for its contributions to human spaceflight studies. The facility specializes in simulating crewed space missions within a highly controlled and isolated environment, featuring planetary simulation area for extra-vehicular activities (EVA). CleverHive’s product development and demo was possible thanks to support from ESA BIC Poland.

Tackling the team coordination bottleneck

Whether on the lunar surface or during complex robotic operations on Earth, coordination remains one of the primary bottlenecks for the success of the rover mission. With multiple specialists involved, crews often face an overwhelming amount of incoming data to analyze - from the location of high-value deposits to robot health status - all while lacking clear situational awareness of the robot’s surroundings.

CleverHive’s platform solves this by providing an integrated, collaborative digital copy of the terrain, allowing teams to visualize points of interest and share scientific data instantly. By offering real-time decision support, the software eliminates the bottlenecks of verbal-only coordination and ensures that every team member maintains perfect situational awareness, even in unpredictable environments.

The mission: precision mineral mapping in a distributed team condition

The mission tasked a five-person crew with a geological survey: identify, catalog, and score mineral deposits to determine the optimal location for scientific drilling. To succeed, the crew had to navigate the terrain using the Leo Rover from fictionlab - a robust and compact ROS-based rover that is available at the LunAres Research Station for all analog mission participants. The reliability of the Leo Rover provided a stable “plug-and-play” foundation, allowing our team to focus entirely on mission logic and software integration rather than hardware maintenance.

The most significant finding of this demo came from the experiment’s structure. While the first mission had the crew co-located, the second mission forced a split-team protocol. The crew was divided into two separate rooms: the Flight Team, which handled direct rover operation and navigation, and the Science Support Team, which focused on mineral classification and hazard assessment based on provided guidelines that were unavailable for the first team. Voice communication was strictly limited to a single channel between the Mission Commander and the Science Lead. This forced the crew to rely on CleverHive’s software to bridge the information gap.

The results were clear: restricted voice communication combined with software-driven data sharing led to more effective mission execution. By funneling mineral data, priority scores, and hazard alerts directly through our platform, the crew eliminated “communicational chaos” and maintained a clear, shared situational awareness.

The crew’s feedback echoed our observations regarding the synergy created by the software:

“I think there was a great synergy during the second mission. We found that separating the group actually made the process less chaotic, which allowed us to focus more effectively on our specific tasks.”

— stated one of the team members during the discussion after the mission.

In post-mission questionnaires, most participants confirmed that the software effectively bridged the gap between teams. Many noted that the system helped them collaborate more effectively than verbal communication alone and expressed high confidence in using the platform, despite only having a short training session before the mission start.

How CleverHive solves this challenge

The Lunares mission validates that as space exploration moves toward more complex, distributed operations, the right software is mission-critical. CleverHive doesn’t just store data; it provides real-time decision support and a collaborative digital copy of the terrain that keeps everyone - from operators to scientists - on the same page, no matter where they are sitting.

For the Monsaraz Mars Analog Mission crew in Portugal, these two weeks were filled with diverse scientific experiments and technology demonstrations. As one of the main experiments, the habitat crew conducted a remote geological survey of the unknown terrain, using a Leo Rover robot and managing the mission using the mission control software from CleverHive - developed as part of its incubation at ESA BIC Poland.

Photo: Ana Pires

Addressing the mission coordination challenge

Coordination between operators remains one of the main bottlenecks in leveraging mobile robots in complex, unpredictable environments - such as lunar rover missions. With multiple specialists involved, an overwhelming amount of data to analyze, and a persistent lack of clear situational awareness of the robot’s surroundings, making the right decisions and avoiding communicational chaos can be a major hurdle.

CleverHive develops advanced mission control software designed specifically for this problem. Our platform provides mission teams with an integrated data visualization, collaborative digital copy of the terrain, and real-time decision support for mobile robot operations. The Monsaraz Mission was an excellent opportunity to validate the software’s performance and its influence on mission outcomes in a high-fidelity simulation.

Photo: Luis F Costa

The demonstration was made possible by Leo Rover from fictionlab. This robot works out of the box, which allowed us to focus on building upon a reliable platform, without needing to reinvent the wheel. Its open-source, ROS based nature and weatherproofness made it perfect for a use case like this. We highly recommend you check it out here.

Photo: Szymon Bednorz

The rover mission scenario

The mission tasked the analog astronauts with a complex geological survey. The Leo Rover was pre-deployed in the designated area in the outdoor terrain of Alqueva Lake Observatory (OLA). The crew situated inside the habitat had to remotely survey the area, locate visual indicators for high-value minerals and identify an optimal site for a long-term geophysical monitoring station.

The mission was executed in two 60-minute phases with a critical handover in between. The crew was split into two subteams and consisted of space geologist Rafael Rebelo, space geology specialist Florence Basubas, robotics engineers Diogo Paupério and Nadine Duursma, and mission commander Pedro Pedroso.

Photo: Szymon Bednorz

The first subteam was responsible for the initial exploration, classifying mineral indicators and proposing potential sites for a geophysical station along with priority tasks for the second phase. Following a data transfer, the second subteam took over to conduct a detailed investigation of the shortlisted locations, taking into account additional requirements from the mission control, and ultimately selecting the final, justified site for the geophysical station.

Crew feedback and key mission takeaways

Despite significant operational challenges, including signal latency and time pressure, the analog crew successfully completed the missions and achieved the primary objective. The team identified and documented over 20 distinct geological points of interest and designated a final site for the geophysical station. The selected locations met the strict criteria, balancing the practical engineering requirements (a flat, unobstructed space) with the scientific priorities (proximity to specific mineral deposits, designated by Mission Control in the second phase of the mission).

Photo: Luis F Costa

Post-mission analysis provided critical insights into the crew’s workload and challenges. Participants reported that the most mentally demanding tasks included not just operating the rover, but also communicating with teammates and drafting action plans. A key challenge was synthesizing the “bigger picture” - that is, understanding the overall mission terrain and the specific mineral locations. This synthesis was crucial for the mission success, as it directly influenced their decisions on which places to investigate further and, ultimately, their selection of the final site for the geophysical station.

The Monsaraz analog mission allowed CleverHive to observe an operational team using its mission control software under realistic constraints. The results validate that the platform addresses mission-critical needs for robotic operations, while also identifying key areas for future improvements.

The Monsaraz Mars Analog Mission took place from October 13 to 25, in the outdoor area of the Alqueva Lake Observatory (OLA). The scientific and technological leadership was led by INESC TEC, in partnership with NATIXIS.

The mission was coordinated by a 2-member Mission Control team: Ana Pires, a researcher at INESC TEC and the first Portuguese woman Scientist-Astronaut candidate, and Slavka Andrejkovičová, Principal Investigator at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, a Special Expert Scientist for the SAM team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Collaborator at the NASA Goddard Center for Astrobiology.