Hopping robots for planetary exploration

This seems like a much better solution than one big robot that can fail.

www.space.com...

The success of NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity has scored high points for the wheeled automatons, but another plan may one day have their robotic successors hopping.

That plan, according to its research team, calls for a swarm of small, spherical robots the size of tennis balls to hop across another world exploring caves, nooks and other crannies that past mobile robots have been too large to study.

Maybe these little hoppers could hop down a cave on Earth and find evidence of subterranian reptilians. The y may even hop down a Martian cave and find evidence of subterranian Martians. If they could make them waterproof, and add a little propeller, they could explore the water under Europa's icy surface.

I'm curious to see where this goes.

Thank you for sharing this info, it is exciting stuff wounder what we will discover with this!!