Well the Moon is the most obvious place. The Russians sent the lunakhod rovers back in the 1970s. Recently, China has already sent a rover there. But things are really going to hot up next year because that's when the Google lunar X prize candidates will be sending their missions to the Moon. This will definitely happen - at least the attempts will happen, because two of the teams already have verified launch deals.

One of the fun ones to look out for is the astrobiotic, which launches to the Moon on a Falcon 9 some time late 2017 for the Lunar X prize will be carrying four rovers - their own, two rovers from the Japanese team and the Chile one - so all of them will be landed simultaneously, and will be in a race on the surface to compete the 500 meters of travel on the surface of the Moon needed to win the Google lunar X prize

So - depends of course, on whether one of the other teams them all to it.

It will also carry (all on the same mission) payloads for the Mexican space agency, and for Lunar Mission One - British company that plans to fly its own lunar lander to the lumar poles later on.

It will carry two Japanese rovers looking like this

and this

Reaching for the Moon: Japan’s Team Hakuto Competes in International Lunar Race

Then it has a chilean rover looking like this

Astrobotic Adds Another Google Lunar X Prize Team to Its Lander - SpaceNews.com

And their own rover

Google Lunar XPRIZE

All launched to the Moon on the same rocket, and if they land successfully, and if they get there first, all four of these rovers will be racing to complete 500 meters of travel on the surface of the Moon to collect the multi million dollar prize.

Other strong contenders include Team SpaceIL from Israel, who were first with a verified launch deal

And Team Indus because presumably they have a good chance of support from India with its low cost rocket launches.

And Moon Express

who also have a verified launch deal. X Prize Verifies Moon Express Launch Contract - SpaceNews.com

In all there are 16 teams still left in the competition, though some of these may either drop out or merge with other teams (as has already happened before). Teams

So next year will be an exciting time for lunar rovers. And lunar rover operators on Earth will also be able to control their rovers on the Moon almost in real time, only a couple of seconds delay. And what's more, also can do it with broadband communication, and not restricted to communicating only once a day as is the usual situation on Mars. So - we should see a huge speed up compared with the Martian rovers. The last time this happened was in the 1970s and technology has moved on a lot since then.

The conditions on the Moon are very harsh, if the rovers operate for a long period of time, with very hot days and very cold at night. The Chinese rover stopped working, which shows how hard it is. But the Lunakhod rover worked just fine in the 1970s operating for months on the Moon, which shows it can be done, and surely we'll soon have rovers back there again, operating for months on end, with the amount of interest and enthusiasm there is right now.

I don't know what the rovers will do after they complete their 500 meters, but surely this will be a start of many more rover missions to the Moon.

These are all private space companies - government sponsored rovers are not eligible for the prize.

Then in addition the Moon is turning out to be far more interesting than anyone expected, wiht the ice and volatiles at its poles, signs of recent resurfacing (geologically recent, like millions of years ago) of small areas, possibility of large caves which could be up to 5 or 6 km in diameter in the low gravity, with many cave entrances at least already confirmed. And we really know very little about it, on the surface.

And you have the ESA idea of the lunar village, which would be constructed telerobotically from Earth and then the humans go there only once it is pretty much complete already. So that would involve a lot of rover activity on the Moon to build it, and surely also rover science exploration as well before the humans get there. Including probably early robotic trips there to check out where is the best place to build it.

So the Moon seems to be the place for rovers in the near future.

Then - there's Venus - but it's surface is very hot, and it will be quite a challenge to build a rover to last for long, still it's possible. Also floating aerostats in its atmosphere.

Mercury surely possible but I don't know of any plans to send a rover to it.

There's a plan by the Japanese to send a spacecraft to Deimos and Phobos. Hayabusa 3 and do a sample return from Phobos. It's not really a rover, but it's going to do many close up flybys and then has a lander.

http://www.elsi.jp/ja/research/d...

So anyway Phobos and Deimos are targets too. And you could send rovers to study comets. I don't know of any concrete plans but surely the ESA will have a follow up to Philae lander some time? If so then the natural thing is to send a rover, and one that would possibly get about by hopping from place to place over the surface. Same technique could be used for asteroids.

Then for Jupiter's moons, there was an idea to send a ganymede lander Russia May Land Probe on Jupiter's Moon Ganymede with Europe's JUICE Mission

So that could be done.

You could send them almost anywhere, including Titan - there there's an idea of the Titan Submarine: Exploring the Depths of Kraken

Even Pluto is possible.

There are plenty of places to explore. I do think that we should hold off from sending a lander to Europa or Enceladus though. Because of the risk of water close enough to the surface to be contaminated by the lander. Plus in case of Europa - that there's probably ice movement from the surface down into the ocean, so if you land microbes on the surface, by mistake, and they manage to avoid being fried by Jupiter's radiation (which some at least would do if the electronics remains intact and functioning with present day methods of sterilizing probes), then there's a big risk there that you end up just finding the life you brought there yourself. And perhaps even making some vulnerable less evolved life there extinct as a result.

Congress has mandated NASA to build a Europa lander, but I don't know if that will happen as described. Congress: NASA must not only go to Europa, it must land

I think this is going beyond the bounds of what a government body should do - to tell scientists that they have to do scientific exploration of the solar system in a particular way. That's not something that can be decided by politics, as it depends on what is possible (some things you might want to do just can't be done), on whether it is safe as regards planetary protection of Europa, and whether we know enough yet about the Europan surface to devise a suitable lander. We only have fairly low resolution images of most of Europa especially compared with, say, Mars.

And it also makes it a far more expensive and difficult mission to add a lander to it, means it has to be launched on a very large rocket, perhaps the SLS instead of one of the lower cost rockets.

But at any rate this can be done.

If we can find a way to achieve 100% sterilization in the future - not impossible - then Europa and Enceladus are exciting targets for rovers. Ceres also and Vesta would be interesting to study on the ground.

And many other such places. These are just some of the highlights.

The one to expect first though, in near future, is the Moon. It really does look as if we will soon have multiple rovers on the Moon controlled from Earth, first for the Lunar X Prize, but surely leading on to others later on. All returning photos from the Moon at least as that's one of the X prize conditions.

We will also have many exciting missions to Mars also. It hasn't been forgotten. Indeed - I think it's like satellites. The more you launch satellites, the easier it gets, not harder, to launch more of them, as prices go down, and people find new ways to use them etc. So I don't think this activity on the Moon will detract from exploration on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system. Rather, enhance Mars exploration as well as being a place to develop new ways to explore with rovers, and if the rovers can show in practice what a huge difference it makes to have 24/7 connectivity and broadband communication, perhaps it could be an incentive for better communications with our Mars rovers - which is currently the main bottleneck slowing down exploration of Mars. Not the light speed travel time. They could be ten times faster, do ten times as much as they do now in the same time, and still not hit the limits set by speed of light communications. The problem is the very small amount of bandwidth, and difficulty of finding a slot also meaning that teams on Earth typically communicate only once a day with a rover on Mars.

See also my Case For Moon - New Positive Future For Humans In Space - Open Ended With Planetary Protection At Its Heart

And you might be interested in the Case for Moon facebook group.