Preparing on Earth the most delicate operations of a rover bound for Mars means dealing with timing. Communications between our planet and the Red Planet can take up to 44 minutes, so no operator can drive the vehicle in real time. For this reason, the European Space Agency relies on a simulator developed by the Italian company Exprivia, ahead of the arrival of the Rosalind Franklin rover of the ExoMars mission, expected in 2030.
The project stems from an agreement announced in January: the technology of the Molfetta-based ICT group will develop a virtual and augmented reality application that will allow scientists and operators at ESA's Rover Operations Control Center (ROCC) to simulate, test and refine the rover's operations before it lands on Mars. The system recreates the environment in a highly faithful way, although the landscape is imaginary yet plausibly Martian, which allows movements to be rehearsed with correct immersion.
Image: MSN — https://www.msn.com/it-it/scienza/generale/un-simulatore-italiano-per-il-rover-europeo-su-marte/vi-AA2g6k5x
The simulation is meant to check in advance how the vehicle will react to the terrain and which manoeuvres are safe. The value of the system lies in letting teams practise scenarios that cannot be reproduced on Earth, testing procedures before an intervention that, once in the field, would allow no immediate corrections.
The context explains why this work matters. ExoMars looks for traces of life on the Red Planet, and Italy takes part in the design, communication and instruments of the mission. Exprivia's simulator belongs to a preparation phase that goes beyond the single rover: as the Airbus case shows, where engineers use a Steam Deck with custom software to command an ExoMars rover prototype during ground tests, movement validation relies on tools built for the lab while autonomous navigation systems are still awaited.
The choice to recreate a faithful virtual environment follows the same logic: the final rover will have to recognise the terrain and choose its routes on its own, because the signal delay makes manual commands impractical. Ground operators must therefore know the vehicle's behaviour in advance, and the simulator is the tool through which they build that knowledge.
Looking ahead, preparation work will accompany the rover until its arrival on Mars, expected in 2030. For Italy, the project marks the presence of a national company at the operational core of a European planetary exploration mission.
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