(Image credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech) Work is progressing on a vital part of NASA's Mars sample return plans. The Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) is a small, lightweight, two-stage solid-propellant rocket with a big assignment: blast rock, sediment and atmospheric samples off Mars in the ear...
— China moves Mars sample-return launch up 2 years, to 2028 NASA is researching both landing options — the detailed engineering work that would be required for each, for example — and doesn't expect to make a decision until mid-2026. With that timeline, the European return or...
Responding to an independent review of NASA's ambitious Mars Sample Return mission, agency officials said Monday they will seek fresh ideas from agency engineers, researchers and the private sector to come up with alternative mission designs to reign in sky-rocketing costs...
Credit: NASA NASA has provided a long-awaited update on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, and the news isn't good. Major changes are coming to the program, but we don't know quite what those changes are yet—no one does, which is the problem. NASA acknowledges the deficiencies cit...
A Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is a goal of the Mars Program. Recently, NASA and JPL have been studying the possibility of a Mars Sample Return some time in the next decade of Mars exploration. In 2001, JPL commissioned four industry teams to make a fresh examination of MSR ...
NASA has started work to revise its approach to Mars Sample Return after an independent review concluded the current architecture was “unrealistic”.
NASA announced Monday it is revising plans for itsMars Sample Return (MSR) missiondue to the estimated cost and long wait time for samples to return to Earth. The mission's goal was to collect samples of rock, soil, atmosphere and loose surface material and deliver them back...
An illustration of NASA’s Sample Return Lander shows it tossing a rocket in the air like a toy from the surface of Mars.NASA “Mars Sample Return will be one of the most complex missions NASA has ever undertaken. The bottom line is, an $11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040...
In 2033, a spaceship in Mars orbit will deliver a sample to the Utah desert (USA). Mars exploration is not only NASA’s mission. China, in another development, has its sights set on bringing samples back from Mars by 2031. If the mission is successful, the country will be the first ...
— NASA is poised to launch its first Mars sample return mission, though not in the traditional sense of the term. The U.S. space agency is preparing to send its next rover to the Red Planet with the tools needed to collect and cache samples for their later return to Earth by a futur...