dreams · Oct 18, 2019
Dream Chasers: Start Your Dreams on Mars
Last updated: July 17, 2026
Team Tumbleweed, 16 students building a wind-driven Mars rover across TU Delft, TU Wien, and Stanford, outgrew Excel and tried Trello and MeisterTask before settling on Quire. They credited Quire's nested task list, clean interface, and Slack and Google Drive integrations for keeping a fast-growing remote team organized.
Exploring Mars is no longer just a wild dream to human beings anymore. Team Tumbleweed is a group of currently 16 students that is building a wind-driven Mars rover. The team is located at TU Delft in the Netherlands, TU Wien in Austria, and at Stanford University in the US.
The idea is to develop a scouting solution that is able to rapidly explore large areas of Mars’ surface to identify research targets and find landing spots. Tumbleweed is a good mix of engineers, software developers, PR strategists, and business students. The team is currently growing from the core team of 4 people to hopefully around 50 in November 2019.
After several months of using Quire, the team loves to share with us how Quire has supported the whole team in managing their projects and collaborate with the team members from all over the globe.
Student space teams are part of a real boom. NASA notes that thousands of small satellites now launch each year, and a wind-driven Mars rover is exactly the kind of ambitious project that boom makes possible.
Why is an Excel file no longer viable for a dynamic team anymore?
As the large remote team is coming together in a short time, Tumbleweed immediately faced a challenge with tracking their task list using Excel. The old-fashioned tool like Excel cannot be enough for a dynamic team and soon appeared to be not viable anymore. The team needs a new solution with rather basic functionality and good usability to manage their growing task lists.
Productivity software is such a crowded market and finding a one-size-fits-all solution is simply a mission impossible. Team Tumbleweed has googled for the best task management software and tried several popular solutions such as Trello or Meistertask before they settled for Quire.
“We used another popular solution for some time but no one really liked it since it forces you to put things on boards and people also were too lazy to look into it often.” -- Tumbleweed Team
How does Quire provide the exact features our team needs - no more, no less?
After a short time of initial trial with Quire, Tumbleweed decides to settle with Quire. “[Quire] is the only free tool that had this “premium” feel to it and wasn’t overloaded with features we didn’t need,'' said Tumbleweed Team.
As one of the core values that Quire team shares when we started to develop Quire, trying to please everyone by stuffing as many features as possible into a project management software won’t do any good for a team. Instead of driving users crazy with the features maze, Quire focuses on creating the set of features that can go well with the existing workflow and deliver a whole package solution that can actually help users to get things done.
Team Tumbleweed also shared with Quire how they love the modern and minimal interface of this tool - just like a clean, well-organized sheet of paper lays out all the information you need. The main panel shows very clearly who to do what and when to meet the deadlines. It is critical for team collaboration to view and track what the other teammates are working on at the moment.
Since Mars exploration is obviously a big project that requires all hands on deck, communication can be very challenging and might backfire on the productivity if not handled carefully. Team Tumbleweed took advantage of Quire's nested task list to break down the whole project to digestible tasks, organize in a well-structured hierarchical list, and keep everyone informed with the Slack and Quire integration.
“Thank you so much for your work! We have already recommended it to other student groups.
Please stick to your philosophy of providing only the most essential features but making those as easy to use as possible. You’re amazing!” -- Tumbleweed Team
Quire also allows Team Tumbleweed to keep documents corresponding to a task centralized using Google Drive integration. You just need to log in to Quire, find everything in one central place and waste no time since you never have to search for the deliverables.
Choosing a good project management software that has enough features for the team to get things done yet still maintain a simple and clean minimalist is not an easy mission. Quire team is very happy to join the exciting journey of Team Tumbleweed. And, we aspire to hear more great stories about Quire’s role in pursuing your next goals!
Read more on 20 hidden Quire features worth knowing, without ever feeling overloaded.
Related: Quire Kanban Board 2.0: Visualize Team Progress — a visual alternative for teams like Tumbleweed who still want board-style tracking alongside a nested task list.
Team Tumbleweed, at a glance
A distributed student rover team, in one view.
More from our Dream Chasers series: Dream Chasers: An NPO Coordinating 400 Volunteers and Dream Chasers: Making a Safer and Cleaner Space Environment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Team Tumbleweed and what are they building?
Team Tumbleweed is 16 students across TU Delft, TU Wien, and Stanford building a wind-driven Mars rover to explore the planet's surface and scout landing spots.
How does Team Tumbleweed use Quire to manage a remote team?
They break the project into a nested task list, use Slack integration to keep everyone informed, and use Google Drive integration to centralize documents tied to each task.
Why did Team Tumbleweed choose Quire over Trello and MeisterTask?
They'd tried both but disliked being forced onto boards that people rarely checked. Quire was the only free tool that felt premium without unnecessary features.
