The Mars Sample Return mission has a shaky future, and NASA is calling on private companies for backup
It’s not easy to collect rocks on a budget when the rocks are 140 million miles away.
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It’s not easy to collect rocks on a budget when the rocks are 140 million miles away.
A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from $5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip to 2040.
From more Mars exploration to buzzing a moon of Saturn, space helicopters are just getting started
The discovery of an ancient lake bed beneath the Perseverance rover's location on Mars could mean the robotic scout has already scraped up microbial fossils. But we won't know for sure until we fetch the sample.
Mars Sample Return has always been an expensive, high-risk, high-reward project. But now, with realization of the mission’s actual cost and expanding timeline, Congress must commit to fully supporting the effort or risk tanking the rest of NASA’s planetary science program