The year 2025 isn't even a week old and NASA is already gearing up for its first big announcement, this one about the agency's ambitious, yet beleaguered, Mars sample return mission. Today (Jan. 7), ...

A photomontage shows tubes containing samples from Mars, as collected by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. The agency's Mars Sample Return Program plans to bring these samples back to study them in ...

After an independent review concluded NASA's plans to robotically collect and return rock and soil samples from Mars could cost up to $11 billion, NASA "pulled the plug" and is focusing on two options ...

Update: A minibus spending package passed by the House of Representatives on January 8, 2026, effectively cancels the Mars Sample Return program by eliminating almost all funding for future missions.

NASA's troubled efforts to get prized Martian samples to Earth could get a lifeline, if a new proposal for a more cost-effective mission architecture gets the go-ahead. The Perseverance rover landed ...

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NASA wants to return Mars samples to Earth, but budget problems and technical woes have the mission caught between a rock and the Red Planet. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...

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 ...

This mosaic is made up of more than 100 images captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter, which operated around Mars from 1976 to 1980. The scar across the center of the planet is the vast Valles Marineris ...

This photomontage shows tubes containing samples from Mars, as collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. The agency’s Mars Sample Return Program plans to bring these samples back to study them in ...

The aerospace giant says it can revive Mars Sample Return with a leaner, lower-cost approach drawing on proven designs. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission ...