Future exploration efforts of the Moon, Mars and other bodies are poised to focus heavily on persistent and sustainable survey and research efforts. This is especially true for the Moon, as additional orbital and surface efforts have been made by a number of countries for the first time and given the recent interest in a long-term sustainable human presence at the Moon. Key to these efforts is understanding a number of important processes on the lunar surface for both scientific and operational purposes. We discuss the potential value of a powerful tool complementary to currently used reconnaissance techniques: in-situ artificial substrate witness plates. These tools can supplement familiar remote sensing and sample acquisition techniques and provide a sustainable way of monitoring processes in key locations on planetary surfaces while also maintaining a low environmental footprint. We examine and discuss unique case studies to show how key processes such as water transport/hydration, presence and contamination of biologically relevant molecules, solar activity related effects, and other processes can be measured using small artificial substrate witness plates we call ‘biscuits’. These biscuits can yield key location sensitive, time integrated measurements on these processes that can inform scientific understanding of the Moon as well as enable operational goals in lunar exploration. While we specifically demonstrate this on a simulated traverse and for selected examples, we stress that all groups interested in planetary surfaces in the future should consider these adaptable, low footprint and highly informative tools for future exploration.

Field studies at terrestrial analogue sites represent an important contribution to the science of ocean worlds. The value of the science and technology investigations conducted at field analogue sites depends on the relevance of the analogue environment to the target ocean world. We accept that there are no perfect analogues for many of the unique environments represented by ocean worlds but suggest that a one-to-one matching of environmental characteristics and conditions is not crucial to the success or impact of the work. Instead, we must instead determine which processes and parameters are required to map directly to the target ocean world environment with high fidelity to address the science question or engineering challenge. Where there are discrepancies between the model and target environment, we must fully understand how those limitations impact the applicability of the study, and mitigate these where possible using alternative approaches. Here we present a two-step approach to 1) identify the most crucial processes and parameters associated with a given science question and 2) assess the fidelity of these processes and parameters at a proposed field site to those expected for the target ocean world. We demonstrate this approach in a test case evaluating three types of ocean world analogue environments with respect to a science question. Our proposed framework will not only enhance the scientific rigor of field research but also provide access to a broader range of field sites relevant to ocean worlds processes, enabling a greater diversity of ocean and geological science researchers.