Autonomy is an essential factor to maximize the

scientific return of exploratory missions, and it in-

creasingly motivates the development of intelligent

technologies that reduce the need for remote con-

trol or human supervision. is is the case for in-

stance in the fields of rover navigation or on-board

science analysis for planetary exploration. Inter-

estingly, some of the tasks involved in such en-

deavors are also faced and efficiently solved by bio-

logical systems in nature, e.g. the animal olfactory

system is able to autonomously detect and track

cues (molecules) over long distances; it can robustly

cope with sparse or noisy data, and it requires low

computational complexity and energy consump-

tion. On account of such capabilities, technolo-

gies that find inspiration in the neural architecture

of biological systems present intrinsic advantages

that give answers to the requirements of space en-

vironments. is paper outlines recent work in

the fields of bio-inspired autonomous navigation

and neuromorphic chemical sensing. We envision

that these two approaches can be merged to pro-

duce novel techniques for autonomous exploration

in space applications.