TABLE OF CONTENTS Elena Gaura
Robert Newman
As a conclusion to this book, it is appropriate to look at new areas of technology, research and exploration that the intelligent MEMS sensor technologies that form the subject of the book make possible. This will be done by means of an outline feasibility and design for a speculative exploration mission, made possible by the combination of MEMS and cogent sensor technologies. The prospective mission plan will be fleshed out using information drawn from the chapters of the book, to show how each of the topics that has been discussed contributes to the overall feasibility of a dream application, such as the one that will be proposed. The original purpose of this study was to provide an attractive scenario for the promotion of the importance of pervasive microsensing technologies and to inform a continuing research agenda in this area. The scenerio has provided case studies which have helped the development and refinement of many of the ideas put forward in this work. As such it provides an excellent vehicle to draw those ideas together, and place them in the context of their joint and several contribution to the new sensing technologies, which will enable completely new ways of approaching the solution of some hitherto very difficult sensing problems.
The work on this scenario started shortly after the failure of the Beagle II Mars mission. This might be unfamiliar to non-British readers. For a summary of the mission itself the reader is referred to the...
