Microrovers for assisting humans on the moon and elsewhere: Microrover catalog, requirements, and general design conclusions

Microrovers, which we define as one to roughly ten kilograms, have been little studied for planetary exploration, and until this and related studies, have hardly been studied at all for how they could work with future human exploration of the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. For a variety of functions, microrovers have advantages over larger rovers because of their low cost, mass, and volume. We have produced a publicly accessible online catalog of terrestrial and planetary microrovers, defined a set of Level 1 requirements that could be applied to microrovers, and have derived several general design conclusions. Microrovers for use with and by astronauts have high merit and near-term feasibility, and could help enable safer, more efficient, more publicly engaging human exploration of the Moon, Mars, or asteroids.