Rover-Based In-Situ Spectral Acquisition at a Lunar-Martian Analogue Site

The CubeSat standard has been shaping small satellite development for over two decades. What started as a university tool for hands-on spacecraft engineering has grown into a framework used by agencies and companies worldwide. The key insight was never just miniaturization but standardization,
which made development faster, cheaper, and repeatable. In recent years, the same logic has been applied to planetary surface mobility. Concepts like the CubeRover (Astrobotic/Carnegie Mellon, Iris launched 2024) and the HiveR (von Unwerth et al., Advances in Astronautics, 2023) have shown that adapting
CubeSat mechanical standards to wheeled surface platforms is possible and opens surface science to a wider range of teams and institutions. The logic is the same: standardized form factors, off-the-shelf components, and development cycles accessible to students that can still produce hardware with real mission relevance.
The work presented here integrates a 3U CubeSat mechanical base into a fully operational remote-controlled rover for in-situ spectral measurements at the DECOS MoonMars analogue facility in Noordwijk, Netherlands. The rover was developed by students under Dr. Mojtaba Raouf and Prof. Bernard
Foing at Leiden University as a demonstration platform for CubeSat-scale in-situ science. The platform uses a four-wheel tank-drive configuration driven by two L298N motor driver modules controlled by an Arduino Uno over USB serial at 115200 baud. A Raspberry Pi 3B+ serves as the onboard computer.
The spectrometer is an Ocean Optics USB4000 fiber-coupled unit covering 196 to 913 nm, interfaced through SpectraLabPro, an open-source Python-based instrument interface developed by Dr. Raouf and built on the python-seabreeze library, supporting live spectrum display, dark subtraction, and reflectance
measurements.
The mission session was conducted as a full analogue operation with two operators. The first operator suited up in EVA simulation gear, carried the rover to the target area at the DECOS field site, positioned it near the sample rocks, connected the power and established the WiFi network, then returned to the
vehicle which served as the habitat and command module. Once inside, the helmet was removed and the laptop was used to connect to the rover over WiFi, beginning the remote teleoperation phase. At no point during the science phase did the first operator have direct visual contact with the rover or the field
site. Navigation and sample targeting relied entirely on the onboard camera feeds. A second operator remained outside at a distance with binoculars providing continuous visual observation of the rover and its surroundings, relaying situational awareness to the first operator via radio throughout the session. This two-operator setup mirrors the setup of a surface EVA crew member and a habitat-based mission controller, with the external observer giving the mission controller an extra set of eyes on the rover during the analogue test.

Figure 1: EVA phase: suited operator positioning the
rover at close range to a rock target before returning to
the habitat vehicle.

Figure 3: Remote teleoperation from inside the habitat
vehicle. The operator has no direct visual of the rover or
field site during the science phase.

Figure 4: SpectraLabPro GUI showing live spectrum
acquisition alongside the Pi Camera feed of the mineral
sample.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the ILEWG LUNEX EuroMoonMars grant. The authors thank the LUNEX
EuroMoonMars EMMESI team and co-supervisors from Leiden University, Inholland Delft, and TU Delft
for their support and collaboration. Related activities are described in Foing et al. (LPSC 2025, abstract
1316) and Foing et al. (LPSC 2026, abstract 1625).