MIDAS

Future satellites will go far beyond the farthest any human object now has gone. As the voyage of the satellite takes longer, it becomes more expensive, because sending another one would take a lot of time, twice as much. Rovers, or even manned space crafts, that are supposed to land on an extraterrestrial planet are even more expensive, and thus we need to avoid trashing them by landing in a unfavorable landing zone.

MiDAS stands for Mini Deployable Autonomous Satellite. Instead of sending one sattellite, we could send multiple smaller ones. You group them in a bigger carrier, once the carrier has reached outer space, you release the smaller satellites. These inexpensive artificial moons, will then be launched to an interesting planet or a smaller planetoid. These little satellites will be equipped with a propulsion system and all kinds of instruments to take measurements and a small solar panel since it needs relatively little energy. Once a MiDAS has reached it's destination, it activates it's sensors and starts taking measurements and transmittig data to either the earth or it's carrier, whitch uses less power because of the shorter distance. If a MiDAS is sent accompanying a rover or a manned space craft, it can be used as a scout, to, for example, measure hydrogen levels in the lower atmosphere, if there is any that is. If you were planning to land a rover on a planetiod, it might be interesting to know where to land it exactly, so when a MiDAS senses that a certain area is not an ideal landing area, you could alter the course of the rover.