Menagerie of Mars Scouts: Bold New Proposals for Exploring The Red Planet

Posted by tourdemars to Scout Missions at May 21, 2001 12:00 PM

Mars attracts! Everything from a solar-powered hopper and high flying vehicles to a Mother Goose craft that unleashes tiny robotic goslings – these are among the candidates ready to serve as a new breed of future Mars explorer. Dozens of Red Planet exploration schemes are on the table this week, all under NASA review as proposals for the space agency’s Mars Scout program. A little aerial "dogfight" might even be on tap between supporters of sensor-carrying aircraft zipping across Martian skies and advocates of instrumented balloons breezing about the planet.