Historically, planetary and lunar rovers have been wheeled-driven. While this is usually seen as an advantage –due to the flight experience– in some cases, the unavoidable presence of gears and mobile parts can be a significant hazard to the mission. The abrasive lunar regolith has been the origin of substantial problems with the Apollo rovers. Here we propose a completely different scheme: a spherical rover in which all the moving parts are protected from the environment by an external spherical shell

Peer Reviewed