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In order to prepare manned missions to other planets it is necessary to monitor permanently the surface environment and have a clear notion of its conditions. Hundreds or thousands of small wireless sensors could be dropped from a satellite orbiting the planet onto the surface to assure a uniform and sufficient coverage. These autonomous sensors would then create their own ad-hoc network while some of them, equipped with satellite communication capabilities, would establish a link between the wireless sensor network and the satellite. Data gathered from the sensors would be processed and sent to the satellite and later to Earth. The main goal of the SWIPE project is to design and develop sensor node prototypes. The whole system will be integrated and evaluated in laboratory and in field tests on planetary surface analogues. An extensive research on novel multi-sensor data processing and data fusion techniques is also being carried out
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