NASA has picked nearly a dozen concepts that deserve further study for exploring Mars, including a red planet platoon of gliders, small landers, and a way to snag Martian atmospheric dust and gas for return to Earth.

Mars attracts! Everything from a solar-powered hopper and high flying vehicles to a Mother Goose craft that unleashes tiny robotic goslings

Mars needs spacecraft! That

Small may soon be big for NASA. A tiny rover vehicle studying an asteroid and a diminutive glider swooping through Martian skies are among the pint-sized spacecraft likely to help explore the solar system over the next decade, says a NASA official.

Bruised by the recent loss of the $165 million Mars Polar Lander, NASA is studying a new class of smaller, cheaper and more robust spacecraft. These probes could land on Mars to reconnoiter terrain that larger missions could later study in detail. Called appropriately enough “Scouts,” two of the 220-pound (100-kilogram) spacecraft could venture to Mars as soon as 2003, said Barry Goldstein, who is leading the study at NASA