“I’m especially pleased that the goal is to bring back as many as 30 sample tubes as early as 2035,” she says. Those samples “will address fundamental questions for us as humans and ...

The science community has long identified a Mars Sample Return mission as the top priority for NASA's planetary science program. In the National Academies' most recent decadal survey released in ...

Option one would use the same "sky crane" landing system proven with NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, a smaller sample collection spacecraft, a smaller rocket to boost the samples ...

The goal of the Mars Sample Return Program, which is being planned jointly with the European Space Agency (ESA), is to retrieve samples of rock, gas and loose surface material that were collected ...