U.S. plans to return Mars samples face delays as China advances its own mission. Scientists and policymakers debate costs, timelines, and the role of sample return in future Mars exploration ...

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is continuing its mission to collect samples despite uncertainty about when or if those ...

The race to Mars has quietly become the defining contest of twenty-first century spaceflight, pitting a state-backed Chinese ...

Right now one of the most advanced planetary explorers ever built is scouring the surface of Mars. Supported by a team of hundreds of scientists back on Earth, the Perseverance rover has traveled ...

NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, was fired up on Wednesday when he joined a teleconference to talk about new scientific findings that concerned the potential for life to have once existed on ...

Bringing samples from Mars back to Earth is one of NASA's most ambitious goals. The plan goes back to the 1970s, with NASA's robotic exploration program, when the first spacecraft landed on the ...

NASA’s Perseverance rover made a thrilling discovery on Mars: a rock sample containing minerals that on Earth are tied to microbial life. While not proof, it is one of the strongest clues yet that ...

NASA aims to return Martian soil and rock samples to Earth in the 2030s, marking the first such planetary sample return mission. A decision on the mission profile is delayed until mid-2026. Two ...

When the Perseverance rover arrived on Mars nearly five years ago, NASA officials thought the next American lander to take aim on the red planet would be taking shape by now. At the time, the leaders ...