NASA proposes a cheaper and faster method to bring rocks and soil from the planet Mars

Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States – The POT has proposed a cheaper, faster way to bring rocks and soil back from Mars, after the budget for its original plan ballooned to $11 billion.

Administrator Bill Nelson unveiled a revised draft Tuesday, less than two weeks before he leaves his post as NASA chief when President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Nelson said he canceled the original sample return plan months ago because of high costs and the delay in getting anything from Mars before 2040.

NASA last year asked industry and others to propose better options to ensure that samples collected in cigar-sized tubes by NASA’s Perseverance rover arrive here in the 2030s, long before astronauts arrive. venture to the red planet.

“We want to return 30 titanium tubes as soon as possible at the cheapest price,” Nelson said.

The space agency said it is considering two options that would cost between $6 billion and $7 billion, including one that would feature innovative designs by commercial partners. The number of spacecraft and launches would remain the same, but NASA said the proposed options would simplify the mission.

The final decision will be made next year, after engineering studies detailing each option. The more traditional alternative would use the same landing method that brought NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers to the Martian surface: a rocket-guided platform known as a sky crane. The second option would include a landing system developed by private companies. Not many details of that option were given in the latest announcement.

Perseverance has collected more than two dozen samples since its landing in 2021, and will gather more as part of NASA’s high-priority operation to search for signs of ancient Martian microscopic life. Scientists want to analyze samples from the Red Planet’s dry ancient river delta in laboratories on Earth.

NASA officials emphasized that both options would simplify things by cleaning sample tubes on the surface of Mars, rather than in the return spacecraft, and switching from solar to nuclear power to withstand Martian dust storms.

Nelson said it will be up to the next government to decide how best to recover samples from Mars, with money needing to start flowing now to achieve this. To replace Nelson, Trump has nominated technology billionaire Jared Isaacman, who has funded two trips to space.

“What we wanted to do was give them the best options possible so they can move forward from here,” Nelson said.