This new rover is far faster than previous Mars rovers.

"Legged robot performing analogue tests in Marslabor at the University of Basel. Credit: Dr. Tomaso Bontognali" (ScitechDaily, This Robot Could Explore Mars 3x Faster Than Today’s Rovers)

Mars rovers like Curiosity are impressive. But the fact is that. The Curiosity rover is launched. In 2011, and that means it’s over a decade old. And the new technology beats that rover anytime. The next-generation rovers are different than Curiosity. Modern rovers use feet. And that makes them more capable of operating. In bad terrain. Than rovers that use wheels. The new rovers mimic animals like dogs or cats. And that gives them a very impressive terrain capacity. Walking vehicles are tools that can make a new age for space research. The new systems use more advanced semi-automatic technology than Curiosity. They are more autonomous. In some visions, things like drone swarms. 

Or small-sized walking drones to research planets like Venus or their surfaces. The problem with long-term space missions is the time. Those systems must operate. When we send a probe to Saturn’s moon, Titan, or into the farther distance. Like Uranus and Neptune, the flight time would be incredible. The Cassini spacecraft traveled to Saturn for about 7 years. The launch time was October 15, 1997. And the probe entered. The Saturn orbiter on July 1, 2004. The flight time means that the probe. What is sent to that trip is old-fashioned when it arrives at the orbiter. The flight time to Neptune is far longer than the travel to Saturn. 

"On the left: the robot performing autonomous measurements of a rock with MICRO and Raman. On the right: examples of images from the microscopic imager (MICRO) returned by the robot, showing the texture of three different lunar analogue materials in RGB, UV, and IR. Credit: Dr. Gabriela Ligeza" (ScitechDaily, This Robot Could Explore Mars 3x Faster Than Today’s Rovers)

The flight time to that planet is approximately 12-14 years. That means the technology. That used for the spacecraft is old-fashioned when that system arrives at the orbiter. Another problem is that. Space is. A very big and mysterious place with big surprises. The GRB, or FRB (Gamma-Ray Bursts, or Fast Radio Bursts), can destroy spacecraft in seconds. The solar system is full of asteroids. Most of them are centimeter-class particles. And if one of them impacts the spacecraft, that causes destruction. This is the reason. Why drone swarms and small robot packs are suitable for deep space missions. When one of those participants is destroyed, that doesn’t affect other systems. A futuristic probe solution. It can be. Like balls that are connected with a net. That structure can help those probes to survive. From long-term space travel. 

The swarm or pack of robots can operate in larger areas. Existence of the atmosphere is the thing. That determines. The way. Those robots can move. The robot. That flies using propellers require an atmosphere. The robot pack. That moves on the ground requires systems. 

And structures. That allows them to move on an icy surface. The AI-controlled, biomicking robots that mimic creatures like snow leopards can operate on the surface of icy moons. The lack of atmosphere makes suction cups ineffective.  So those systems require the hooks or claws that it can use on those icy shells of distant moons. 

https://scitechdaily.com/this-robot-could-explore-mars-3x-faster-than-todays-rovers/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens