She’s the CEO of Fleet Space Technologies. She used to work as a propulsion test engineer at the European Space Agency and now she’s leading a company that plans to launch seismic probes to the moon.
But she’s also “tapped” into what’s going on with Earth too, especially in mining. Her message was pretty clear: if the mining world doesn’t start using smarter data strategies and bring in more data scientists, it’s going to fall behind. Way behind. She thinks we’re on the edge of a 10-to-20-year wave of change, and companies that don’t get on board now might not survive the ride.
Drawing Inspiration from Space
She spoke about NASA’s Moon and Mars missions and how they actually laid the groundwork for how we think about data. When astronauts put seismic probes onto the moon in 1969, the data they collected didn’t seem all that exciting.
Fast forward a few decades, AI comes into the picture, and suddenly, they’re finding out the moon has thousands of quakes every day. And more importantly, it proves that the data was there all along, we just didn’t have the tools to make sense of it.
Fleet Space is using that same mindset. They’ve teamed up with Firefly Aerospace to send new seismic probes to the moon next year. Space exploration now is not about getting there, because they have big rockets, but it’s about staying there. They need to find resources on the moon so they can get to Mars.
But she commented that the bigger picture is that those same technologies can help companies do a better job of finding minerals back on Earth.
The Data Gap in Mining
Mining generates tons of data, but it’s not using it well. Nardini pointed out that your average exploration project produces about 150 terabytes of data a year. In comparison, Formula One handles about 1,500 terabytes of data per year, a hospital about 50,000 terabytes of data per year, and Netflix processes 20,000 terabytes, but every single day! That comparison shows how far behind mining is when it comes to working with data at scale.
Most of the data in mining exploration is scattered and “messy”. Geologists spend most of their time just cleaning it up before they can even start making sense of it. Apparently, about 90% of the time in AI-assisted mineral exploration is wasted just preparing the data. Fleet Space is trying to change that by pulling together geophysical, geological, and geochemical data into one clean system. That way, teams can make smarter calls, way faster.
She doesn’t think AI is going to replace geologists. She was pretty clear on that. But AI can help them get more out of the data. ML can spot patterns in weeks that might take a person months or even years to recognize. The goal here isn’t to cut people out, it’s to give them better tools.
She imagines AI sitting next to you like a well-educated assistant, helping you figure out where to drill, how to adjust your models, and what’s worth paying attention to. It’s like how ChatGPT lets you speed up writing or brainstorming. That’s the future she’s talking about.
So, that led to another big theme she touched on: talent. The old formula, just hire geologists and engineers, isn’t going to cut it anymore either. You need people who understand AI, ML, and software. Currently, a lot of big mining firms have maybe one AI or ML specialist on staff. Nardini thinks just four or five of the right hires could make a massive difference.
Basically, she believes if you’re not hiring data people, you’re going to fall behind. It’s as simple as that.
FIGURE 1: Spider – Fleet Space’s Lunar Seismic Technology to be Deployed on the Moon in 2026
A Warning From Aerospace
Nardini also gave a bit of a wake-up call. She pointed to how Boeing pretty much owned the aerospace game until SpaceX came along and flipped the script. Now SpaceX is leading the charge.
Could the same thing happen in mining? She thinks it could. If mining keeps dragging its feet, some tech company, maybe Google or Amazon, could swoop in with better data tools and just take over.
Fleet Space already has its own satellite network built for mineral exploration. Their setup links ground-based probes to the cloud, which means no more waiting around for manual data uploads or long analysis timelines. The traditional 15-year mineral exploration cycle from discovery to mine and a drill hole success ratio of 1-in-200 is not going to cut it anymore. With the technology Fleet Space is using, companies can turn months of work into days.
She gave one real-world example where a project that normally would’ve taken 11 months to evaluate took just four days using AI and remote sensing. That kind of speed could be a game-changer in a field where timing is everything.
The Critical Minerals Crunch
And of course, there’s the whole issue of critical minerals. With EV demand surging, the world needs more copper, lithium, nickel, and rare earths. She calculated that, by 2030, EV demand would require 293 new mines, including 61 new copper mines, 52 new lithium mines, 29 new rare earth mines, and 28 new nickel mines. But at the current pace of exploration, it would take hundreds of years to find what they need.
Clearly, something’s got to give. That’s why Nardini is pushing so hard for faster, more efficient ways to explore. AI and satellite surveys are no longer just “nice-to-have” tools. They’re becoming essential. If mining companies don’t catch up, someone else will.
Breaking Down Silos
She also made a great point about how exploration teams still operate in silos. The geologists do one thing, the geophysicists do another, and the geochemists are off doing their own thing too. But nobody’s really pulling all that knowledge together. It’s inefficient, and sometimes the pieces don’t even fit right.
Fleet Space is working to fix that by building systems where everyone’s data plays nicely together. It’s all about speeding things up and cutting out the miscommunication.
Looking Ahead
So what’s next? According to Nardini, don’t be surprised if the big tech players start dipping their toes into mining. They’ve got the AI know-how, the cloud infrastructure, and the data chops. If they see an opportunity, they’ll take it.
The mining world has been slow to embrace new tech, but that window’s closing. Over the next decade or so, the companies that get serious about AI, space-based sensing, and cloud analytics are the ones that’ll lead the next wave of discoveries. The rest? Well, they might be left wondering what happened.
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