Space science. Canada eyes front-row seat in Mars program.

As a first step in that campaign, some 120 researchers met late last month in Montreal to kick around ideas ranging from drilling beneath the martian surface to returning samples from one of its moons. “We look at this as the next major space program for Canada,” says Marc Garneau, recently named executive vice president of the Canadian Space Agency. “We want to be involved with Mars in more than peripheral ways.”