While mankind’s rovers are doing a fantastic job on the surface of Mars, they might not be the ideal tool for exploring other planets. NASA engineers believe that a better solution might be a lightweight, low-cost robot that relies on its flexible, squishable frame to get around.

These “Super Ball Bots” rely on “tensegrity” — a portmanteau of ‘tension’ and ‘integrity’ first coined by futurist Buckminster Fuller, which refers to structures that combine rigid components with flexible materials. There’s no single point of failure, and impacts are spread across multiple paths to reduce stress.

That’s perfect for the exploration of areas we don’t know much about, especially if multiple robots can be deployed together. “Such teams will allow rapid, reliable in-situ exploration of hazardous destination such as Titan, where imprecise terrain knowledge and unstable precipitation cycles make single-robot exploration problematic,” wrote Nasa engineer Adrian Agogino.

The idea is that Super Ball Bots could be released en-masse onto other planets, packed up small during launch and then deploying on arrival into a connected swarm that could gather large amounts of data over a wide area. “We believe tensegrity robot technology can play a critical role in future planetary exploration,” added Agogino.

There’s still work to be done. Controlling a swarm of rolling, bouncing balls is rather less easy than handling the precision of a single rover, and rudimentary AI features may need to be integrated. However progress is swift and already the real-world Ball Bots are starting to approach their simulated equivalents in terms of performance.

But one day, we could see hundreds, or even thousands, of these squishy explorers, communicating across a vast interplanetary internet to map the intricate details of another planet’s surface.