WASHINGTON 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 agencys 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.

This new class of mission is part of NASAs restructured Mars exploration program, sparked by the embarrassing loss in 1999 of both the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander. NASA centers, academia and industry are putting their best proposals forward, in the form of orbiters, aerobots, airplanes, landers and rovers.

In many ways, the Mars Scout effort mimics in spirit and intent NASAs Discovery class of faster, better, cheaper space missions.

Joe Parrish, program executive for the Mars Exploration Program, told SPACE.com that 43 mission-concept study proposals are being discussed during a special workshop held May 21-24 in Pasadena, California.

The prospective Mars Scout ideas are being aired this week in an open forum, as well as closed-door sessions. This process is helping NASA shape the overall program, leading to the first Mars Scout departing Earth in late 2006 or mid 2007, Parrish said.

"We are looking forward to extending the mission set for Mars exploration and returning exciting and valuable new science," Parrish said.

How about VERBAL, for Very Low Frequency Radio Beacon on an Aerobotic Laboratory, an idea from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Then theres MAGE for Mars Airborne Geophysical Explorer, courtesy of Malin Space Science Systems. From the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a balloon-borne geoscience mission to Mars is tagged Piccard, named after the high-altitude adventurer.

Another JPL proposal, SSTAMP, stands for Subsurface Science from Targeted Mars Penetrators. Or how about Arizona State Universitys Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars mission, better known simply as SCIM.

Also among the candidates is the NASA Ames Research Centers Bio-inspired Engineering of Exploration Systems, or BEES for short.