In Super Metroid, you slowly get all these abilities to trick out your bounty hunter's abilities as she hunts down and destroys space pirates and energy-sucking globs of goo.
One of the hallmarks of the series is that there are little prizes hidden in all kinds of nooks and crannies that are steadily more accessible as you find more and more goodies.
One of the things you find early on is the morph ball.
And bombs that you can use when rolled in a ball.
The bombs have the added effect that they bump you slightly up (or slightly to the side if you're not directly on top of them).
Now, it's tough to get the timing right, but if you set a bomb so that you bounce up a little, and then set another in such a way that it explodes right before you fall all the way back down, then you bounce a little bit higher.
Keep on placing bombs and bouncing up higher until you get to someplace that you maybe weren't supposed to be yet. Who knows what you might find.