Current cave climate monitoring is done through direct observation by spelunkers. While this works on Earth (terrestrial applications), it’s not yet feasible for extra-terrestrial caves. This method is also very limited in the amount of data that can be recovered on the climate of any given cave. As of yet, there is no existing technology that allows researchers to easily deploy climate stations throughout a cave and to record temporary (time) rich measures of temperature, humidity, pressure, or wind patterns. This project will address this technology gap by developing the hardware and software to relay climate readings through a network from the depths of a cave to the surface, where another technology can be used to report measures to the researchers. The goal is to have sensor- network cubes that can be dropped throughout a cave and seamlessly connect to each other so that the climate data collected can be transmitted (relayed) through the cave to the entrance where a modem could fire the data back to home base via cellular or satellite phone.
