Mars Horizons space exploration is more than seeking new life and blowing it to bits

Tomas Rawlings had gotten cheese everywhere. At a lunch with some of the best and brightest minds of the European Space Agency, he dropped a roll that exploded “like a cheese grenade.” Melted goo fused with the wirey carpet. Those brilliant scientists and researchers he’d hoped to impress were now treading it all over.

“I had this nightmare scenario of a future thing where like, the ExoMars mission would crash because they found a piece of cheese wedged in some critical solar panel,” Rawlings says.

Rawlings isn’t just a menace to clean carpets; he’s also CEO of Auroch Digital and a game designer. Together with ESA, the team at Auroch has been working to create a strategy simulation that feels true to how agencies operate. In Mars Horizon...

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