# Toward Sustainable Mars Exploration: A Perspective on Collaborative Intelligent Systems
## 6 The Way Forward  
This work describes a futuristic scenario in which a collaborative swarm of autonomous and intelligent vehicles enables sustainable Mars exploration. While it is crucial to identify key challenges, risks, and opportunities at an early stage, the authors are aware that such a scenario on Mars is only feasible after the following steps have been taken. The first step towards this scenario is to create similar applications for collaborative swarms closer to home, i.e., on Earth or the Moon. This strategy is in line with ESA's _Terra Novae_ roadmap and NASA's _Moon to Mars_ strategy. One of the key objectives of the former is the human exploration of the Moon's surface on long-duration missions by 2030 [77]. This involves building habitation modules of the so-called lunar gateway, which will enable refueling and critical communication functions. Furthermore, ESA will start the design and development of Argonaut, a large lunar lander for the delivery of scientific payloads, rovers, and infrastructure. As a perspective paper, this work does not propose an immediate implementation plan but instead outlines a structured research roadmap that identifies the key advancements required for sustainable Mars exploration. A phased approach is essential, progressing from theoretical studies and terrestrial technology development to lunar demonstrations and eventual Martian deployment. The initial phase of research should focus on leveraging advancements in energy-aware autonomous systems, multi-agent coordination, energy-harvesting, and communication protocols, refining these technologies through **terrestrial simulations and analog environments** that replicate Mars-like conditions. This includes evaluating edge intelligence frameworks, energy-efficient networking, and autonomous navigation algorithms in controlled terrestrial settings before extending them to extraterrestrial applications. Following terrestrial research, the next stage involves investigating the feasibility of integrating these systems into upcoming **lunar exploration** missions. The Lunar Gateway, along with ESA's Argonaut lander and planned surface habitats, presents an opportunity to test communication architectures and resource-aware task scheduling in a relevant space environment. Insights from lunar operations will provide a critical bridge toward adapting these technologies for the Martian context. Finally, the transition to **Mars-focused research** will involve theoretical modeling, system-level simulations, and concept validation through precursor missions, enabling incremental adaptation to the unique environmental constraints of the Red Planet. This phase will explore strategies for radiation-hardened autonomy, energy-adaptive decision-making, cooperative robotic exploration, (self-)recovery of vehicles, and recycling of debris, ensuring that the proposed framework aligns with future Mars mission architectures and space sustainability goals. In line, the next step in ESA's roadmap is the sustainable exploration of the Moon in the subsequent decade, ultimately leading to the first human mission to Mars [78]. Designing Martian applications will involve (1) building a digital twin to simulate Martian conditions for prototyping and verification purposes, and (2) designing testbeds to develop and evaluate the proposed technologies. For example, radiation hardening experiments conducted on Earth can be designed to mimic the radiation on Mars to understand and quantify the impact on the device under test. Energy management is one of the most crucial aspects to ensure sustainable Mars exploration. The next steps in this field involve selecting more sustainable energy sources and predicting the amount of available energy. The latter can be further improved by collecting data from various locations on the Red Planet to correlate parameters such as temperature difference between soil and atmosphere, solar irradiation at surface level at different angles, wind velocity with seasons, weather, day of the year, etc.