One thing I have been interested in is using lasers for remote sensing... You can use lasers to turn a sample of any material into a plasma-A spark... looking at the spectrum of this spark can give you information on the chemical makeup of the target... this technique needs some work before it is practical for a space mission, but it could be very useful...If you use short pulses with high peak power and focus them onto a target your required input power could be quite low... I think in 10 years this will be quite feasible for a space mission...

It allows you to stand at a distance and evaluate the chemical makeup of as many rocks as you want....

Imagine this scenario for Spirit as it waits on the lander and mission control tries to divine what targets are worthy of the rovers valuable time...

Fully charged, it determines the distance to about 20 interesting rocks... It discharges a short burst of ultrashort pulses onto the targets- one by one... it analyzes the spectra of each one- scientists now know which rocks may be sedimentary.... which ones they want to visit first... A HUGE time saver!