The aim of the session covers the methods of improving safe planetary surface operations. Recent rover activities on the surface of Mars demonstrated high influence of terrain properties on efficient and safe traversing across the surface.
Soil sensing focused on the terrain traversability (trafficability) for rovers can highly improve the system safety and increase final exploration speed.
The results of the FASTER project (www.faster-fp7-space.eu)in the field of soil sensors, novel reconnaissance rover concept, rovers cooperation, navigation and planning and data fusion, initially prepared to be the technological support for the ExoMars project, fully covers this topic. We would like to present FASTER project results and also offer the space for wide discussion on the overall planetary regolith investigation. Other projects' results will be presented here (eg. ExoMars, SAFER etc).