Current methods for in-situ planetary surface exploration — whether on the Moon, Mars, or beyond — still rely primarily on single, high-cost platforms such as rovers and landers. Rovers, while mobile, are constrained by limited power and the need to avoid hazards, resulting in extremely slow movement (typically a few centimeters per second). As a result, reaching distant areas of interest can take an impractical long time (it will take days to drive a few hundred meters). Moreover, rovers primarily collect single-point measurements sequentially, which limits their ability to study dynamic phenomena across a wide area where simultaneous multi-point data is critical.

Landers face an even greater limitation: immobility. They are restricted to studying the immediate area around their landing site. Critically, neither rovers nor landers are well-suited for accessing high-risk or physically inaccessible locations, such as rock piles, steep slopes, or crater interiors — areas that could damage hardware and potentially jeopardize an entire mission.

To address these limitations, we introduce HexSense: a modular, low-cost wireless sensor node designed for ballistic deployment. These sensor nodes can be "shot out" from a rover or lander to rapidly reach remote or hazardous areas. On the lunar surface, where the vacuum environment and low gravity (1/6th of Earth’s) are favorable, HexSense can be projected to distant sites within seconds. Upon landing, the HexSense automatically stands up-right to realize self-orientation, ensuring more reliable radio frequency communication. Once deployed, multiple HexSense units form a distributed wireless sensor network capable of collecting simultaneous measurements across a broad area. This distributed approach provides spatial coverage, supports dynamic studies, and adds hardware redundancy, ensuring that the system remains functional even if some nodes are damaged.

Each HexSense unit is modular and can be equipped with a range of scientific payloads tailored to the mission’s objectives. For example:

• Field deployments: HexSense has already been deployed in Svalbard for environmental studies and in the Canary Islands to investigate lava tube environments, since lava tubes are believed to exist on the Moon and may serve as future astronaut habitats. In the Canary Islands deployment, one HexSense node was placed inside a lava tube and another outside, enabling comparative environmental monitoring to assess the shielding capabilities of such formations.
• Microgravity testing: A parabolic flight campaign has been conducted to validate HexSense’s operation under lunar gravity conditions.
• Future payloads in development include:
  • A custom-designed 360° camera capable of 3D terrain reconstruction.
  • A miniaturized seismometer for detecting micrometeorite impacts.

In the long term, we envision HexSense as the planetary-surface equivalent of the CubeSat—a standardized, low-cost platform for space research. Just as CubeSats revolutionized access to space, HexSense could make surface exploration more accessible for researchers and students. They will be able to develop custom sensor payloads for HexSense and deploy them on the lunar or Martian surface for meaningful scientific discovery.

Selected media reports:

https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/51765-what-the-hexsense
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mit-media-lab_meet-hexsense-activity-7239357554223411200-6RYN/
https://www.hackster.io/news/iot-shoots-for-the-moon-3e8b97780c54