Are crewed expeditions to the Moon and Mars really the main path toward exploring the Solar System?
Human beings belong biologically to Earth’s biosphere. Our bodies, senses, microbiome, metabolism, and entire life-support system were shaped by terrestrial conditions. Beyond the biosphere, a human being becomes the most complex element of the mission. That person must be protected, kept warm, fed, given medical care, brought back home, or sustained for years inside an artificial environment.
This is why the future exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other worlds should be framed differently. The key issue is no longer whether humans can get there. The more important question is what research tasks a person must physically perform there if the same tasks — or even more complex ones — can be carried out by robotic systems, sensors, automated laboratories, and artificial intelligence.
Credit: JPL Robotics / Robotic Mobility & Manipulation
Why Do We Need a Human Presence on the Surface of an Alien World?
The central question behind crewed expeditions to the Moon and Mars is simple: what research capabilities does a person in a spacesuit provide compared with a well-designed robotic system?
The argument about a geologist’s “field sense” looks weaker with every passing year. A geologist needs eyes, experience, memory, comparison, intuition, and the ability to ask the right question. All of that can remain on Earth. On the surface, cameras, spectrometers, microscopes, drills, manipulators, and automated laboratories can do the work. They see in spectral ranges invisible to the human eye, perform initial analysis on site, and transmit data to teams of specialists who can remain safely on Earth, work in shifts around the clock, and without facing exhaustion or mortal risk.
A human being in a spacesuit on the surface of another world becomes a constrained instrument. A person in a spacesuit sees through protective glass, moves slowly, and depends on oxygen reserves, temperature control, radiation protection, health, fatigue, and the limited duration of a surface sortie. Every action requires a vast support infrastructure.
A robotic explorer can be built specifically for that environment. It can work continuously, withstand extreme conditions, carry out repairs and repetitive operations, collect data, and act under the guidance of artificial intelligence and a scientific team.
Telepresence Instead of a Spacesuit
Automated spacecraft have long been working in places where humans are present only through technology: in orbit, on Mars, near asteroids, and in the outer Solar System. Today these spacecraft are gradually moving from simple command execution toward greater autonomy.
The Perseverance rover uses autonomous navigation to find a safe route toward a selected target among rocks and obstacles. NASA’s Starling satellite swarm tests how several small spacecraft can coordinate their actions without constant manual control from Earth. Europe’s PhiSat-1 satellite used onboard artificial intelligence to filter out unusable images before transmitting data to Earth. NASA/JPL is developing systems that combine data from different satellites and use AI to help detect dangerous algal blooms in coastal waters.
These are different examples, but they point in the same direction. The spacecraft of the future will become an active, intelligent participant in exploration: it will see, analyze, choose routes, distribute tasks, verify data, and send humans information that has already been prepared for interpretation.
In future exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other worlds, systems of remote human presence through robots may become central. Teleoperation allows a person to control a machine, rover, or manipulator from a distance. Telemanipulation translates the movements of an operator’s arms, hands, or fingers into the movements of robotic arms. Telepresence allows the operator to see the world through the robot’s cameras and perceive the remote environment as a real workspace.
Virtual and augmented reality add another layer. An operator can work in a headset, see a stereoscopic image of the surface, turn their head, zoom in on objects, switch between spectral ranges, and view chemical or geological maps overlaid on the real image.
Another important element is haptic feedback. A robot can sense pressure, resistance, vibration, contact with a rock or tool, and the system can transmit part of these sensations to the operator through gloves, joysticks, or specialized manipulators.
In this architecture, the human being remains at the center of exploration. The human mind receives a new working body: cameras instead of eyes, sensors instead of skin, manipulators instead of hands, and artificial intelligence instead of part of the routine analysis.
Robots Are Already Learning to Be Human Hands
Space telerobotics has long since moved beyond science fiction. NASA — the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration — ESA, the European Space Agency, DLR, the German Aerospace Center, and other research centers have conducted experiments in which operators controlled robots from a distance, tested signal delay, machine autonomy, and the ability of humans to work through remote interfaces.
In NASA’s Surface Telerobotics project, astronauts aboard the International Space Station controlled the K10 rover at NASA Ames Research Center in California. The experiment tested a model of remote control in which the human remained in a safe location while the robot worked on a distant surface.
ESA’s METERON program tested technologies for controlling robotic systems on the surface of the Moon or Mars. In joint DLR and ESA experiments, the Rollin’ Justin robot received commands from an astronaut aboard the ISS and independently performed selected actions using local autonomy.
NASA’s BASALT project tested an even more complex scenario: scientific teams working with a Mars-like communication delay. The experiments simulated one-way delays of 5 and 15 minutes. Under such conditions, a human can no longer control a robot like an extension of their own hand in real time. The human sets the goals, while the robot and artificial intelligence carry out local actions autonomously.
This is where one of the most promising directions in space exploration opens up: the creation of an integrated system rather than isolated robotic spacecraft — a network of robots, sensors, laboratories, orbital relays, virtual models, and ground-based scientific teams working together.
We Are Already Learning to Act Through Devices
The technologies of future remote space exploration are growing out of things that have already become part of everyday life. Smartphones, smart glasses, VR headsets, cameras, motion sensors, voice assistants, augmented-reality systems, and consumer drones are gradually teaching people to act through external devices.
Smart glasses can record video, transmit sound, receive voice commands, answer calls, overlay digital information onto the image, or work as a personal screen. VR and AR headsets track head, hand, and eye movements, create a spatial image, and allow a person to interact with digital objects almost as if they were real.
Consumer FPV drones offer a particularly clear example. A person controls a small flying machine through goggles or a headset and receives a live image from the drone’s camera almost from a first-person perspective. In this mode, the drone becomes an external eye, while its camera, stabilization, navigation, and semi-automatic flight modes extend human presence beyond the body.
In space, this logic moves to another scale. A person on Earth sees a distant world through the cameras of a spacecraft, receives data from sensors, controls manipulators, works with a virtual model of the terrain, and uses artificial intelligence to analyze the situation and perform routine actions.
Signal delay becomes one of the main problems for this kind of presence. An operator cannot control a distant spacecraft as directly as a consumer FPV drone. But this boundary is gradually being pushed back through autonomous modes, motion prediction, local artificial intelligence, and control systems designed for remote robotic work under time-delay conditions.
Where the Future’s Money Is Hidden
A separate large budget for telerobotics, telepresence, autonomous laboratories, and artificial intelligence for space systems is barely visible. In the public documents of NASA, ESA, and DLR, these areas usually do not exist as an independent strategic program. They are hidden inside broader budget lines.
DLR’s space activities have an annual budget of slightly more than half a billion euros. But this is the overall budget for the relevant part of the German Aerospace Center: orbital technologies, planetary research, satellite systems, robotics, materials, navigation, energy, and other work. Telerobotics and space autonomy are important there, but they represent only one part of a much larger set of programs.
At ESA, the Human and Robotic Exploration budget line for 2026–2028 amounts to less than one billion euros per year. It covers very different programs and commitments: low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, ExoMars, participation in Artemis, European service modules for Orion, elements of Gateway, and other activities. Against this background, telerobotics, telepresence systems, and control of autonomous robotic spacecraft can only be a small part of a much larger package.
The situation at NASA is similar. Robotics, autonomy, sensors, virtual environments, and operator interfaces are dispersed across technology programs, research laboratories, and supporting activities. They are developing, but they have not yet formed a separate large-scale architecture for exploring the Solar System.
The main point here is not the exact number. Even if we combine the broadest NASA, ESA, and DLR budget lines in which these technologies may be funded, we are still talking about only a portion of funding inside larger programs. A very cautious estimate would place the combined level of funding for such directions at hundreds of millions of dollars per year. By comparison, a single SLS/Orion launch without a lunar landing was estimated by the NASA Office of Inspector General at $4.1 billion, not counting the system’s previous development costs.
This reveals the scale of the imbalance. Technologies that could create an extraordinarily efficient distributed robotic infrastructure for exploring the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and other distant worlds are mostly funded as supporting tools within crewed programs. The largest resources go into an architecture where the central problem remains transporting the human body into a hostile environment and keeping it alive there.
Why This Has Not Yet Become the Main Program
Artemis, Moon Base, and future Mars plans remain important as technical, political, and civilizational processes. They need to be followed closely. These programs will create many useful things: new landing systems, communications, navigation, power systems, automation, and technologies for working on the lunar surface. Some of these technologies may be needed for future space programs, especially robotic exploration.
But the overall logic of crewed movement beyond low Earth orbit increasingly looks like a dead end. Enormous amounts of money, time, and human potential are being spent on bringing a vulnerable human body into a hostile environment, keeping it alive there, and then bringing it back.
Robots, sensors, autonomy, and remote control are still often treated as tools surrounding a person in a spacesuit. In reality, they can become an independent architecture for exploring other worlds.
That would require a different principle for planning space programs. Every new robotic mission should be part of future networks: with standardized interfaces, autonomous navigation, robotic manipulators, onboard analysis, virtual models of the environment, and the ability for ground-based operators to work through telepresence systems.
In that case, Mars rovers, lunar rovers, drones, orbiters, and automated laboratories would gradually become a distributed research system. Humans would remain at the center of goal-setting and scientific analysis, but would act through machines built specifically for hostile environments.
The spacesuit was one of the great symbols of the twentieth-century space age. But the main instrument of future Solar System exploration may emerge from a different logic: the human mind remains on Earth, while a distributed network of robots, sensors, automated laboratories, and artificial intelligence becomes its eyes, hands, memory, and first layer of analysis.
Залишити відповідь