After billions of dollars in spending and decades of planning, NASA may be forced to abandon precious samples of air, rock ...

Related: NASA's Mars sample return plan is getting a major overhaul: 'The bottom line is $11 billion is too expensive' Seven of the proposals received a $1.5 million contract to conduct 90-day ...

NASA has big goals for Mars. The agency wants to collect the first samples from the Martian surface and return them to Earth ...

The results will be worth the effort and the cost, not just in understanding the world around us in general but also in ...

One of NASA’s biggest space missions is in deep trouble. The Mars Sample Return mission is currently on track to be one of the biggest undertakings the space agency has ever attempted ...

Mars sample return tube Instead, NASA and their international partners have been working to distribute the cost and complexity of the mission among several different vehicles. In fact, the first ...

NASA is smoothing out the final details of its future program to bring back treasured martian samples, also known as the Mars Sample Return Program, and its new helicopters might make future ...

See how the Sample Transfer Arm for the Mars Sample Return mission will work in this animation. Credit: ESA/NASA ...

The plan would significantly overhaul flagship programs ... It would also cancel the Mars Sample Return mission, a joint project with the European Space Agency to bring back rock samples collected ...