In the first step of a two-step process, NASA’s Office of Space Science selected three proposals for detailed study as candidates for the next mission in the agency’s Discovery Program of lower cost, highly focused, rapid-development scientific spacecraft. NASA has also decided to fund American participation in a mission to Mars being flown by another nation. In this “Mission of Opportunity” NASA will contribute to seismology, meteorology and geodesy (to measure the size and shape of the planet) experiments on the French-led NetLander Mission, scheduled for launch in 2007. The Mission of Opportunity team will receive $250,000 to conduct its feasibility study.