NASA has proposed creating asteroid hopping probes

Scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have proposed using bouncing probes to measure gravity on asteroids. This is reported in a paper published on the arXiv preprint server.

The Gravity Poppers project involves a group of probes that are released on the surface of a small body, such as an asteroid, comet or small moon, after which the spacecraft begin to periodically jump off it. The mother orbiter then tracks the trajectory, the force with which they bounced off, and the timing of their return back to the surface.