NASA overhauls plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth

NASA on Tuesday announced an overhaul to its plan to collect samples from Mars and return them to Earth.

Agency officials said they have decided to scrap parts of their original plan to cut down on the mission’s technical difficulty and cost and to shorten the timeline for when the samples could be brought back.

Through its Mars Sample Return Program, NASA has for more than two decades been inching toward the goal of retrieving samples of Martian soil that NASA’s Perseverance rover has been collecting since 2021. To do that, the agency had been working to develop multiple new spacecraft to relay the samples off the Martian surface and fly them back to Earth.

NASA said in its announcement it is changing the plan for the spacecraft that will land on Mars to retrieve the samples and exploring two new, different options.

One of the options is to attempt a style of landing similar to what NASA successfully executed with the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. As each rover made its descent, rockets were fired to slow the spacecraft, and an intricate sky crane then lowered them to the Martian surface.

The second option would be to work with private space companies to send a new lander to Mars.

NASA plans to pursue both possibilities in tandem before it makes a final decision about which to use in 2026.

Space industry experts had speculated for months about the fate of the Mars Sample Return Program, which has fallen behind schedule as its budget has swelled.

“The cost began to accelerate to the point that earlier this past year, it was thought that it could be as much as $11 billion, and you would not even get the samples back until 2040,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said at a news briefing Tuesday. “That was just simply unacceptable.”

NASA’s original plan called for developing a “sample retrieval lander,” which would have been equipped with two helicopters to retrieve the sealed sample tubes of rock, soil and atmosphere that Perseverance has collected and cached. The lander would also have carried a rocket to launch the samples off the Martian surface.

Perseverance, which touched down in 2021, has been exploring a 28-mile-wide basin north of the Martian equator that scientists think was home to an ancient river delta.

NASA's earlier plan called for the helicopters to gather the rover's samples, after which the lander’s robotic arm would load them into the rocket. Then the rocket would blast off the Martian surface and jettison a capsule containing the samples while it was in orbit around the planet.

After that would come yet another cosmic relay: The capsule would be intercepted by a spacecraft designed by the European Space Agency, and the precious cargo would begin a journey to Earth.

The details of the design for a different lander and how it would gather the samples once it is on Mars are not yet clear. NASA said, however, that both of the new options involve a smaller rocket system to blast off the Martian surface.

The two alternatives would still use the European-developed vehicle for the journey back to Earth.

Nelson said the changes to NASA's plan could allow samples to arrive back on Earth as early as 2035, but he added that, depending on NASA funding, the timeline could extend to 2039.

He said that the sky crane option would be likely to cost $6.6 billion to $7.7 billion and that the commercial route would be likely to cost $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion.

NASA officials emphasized the importance of studying the samples.

“Mars Sample Return will allow scientists to understand the planet’s geological history and the evolution of climate on this barren planet where life may have existed in the past and shed light on the early solar system before life began here on Earth,” Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. “This will also prepare us to safely send the first human explorers to Mars.”

However, NASA has faced scrutiny in recent years over the cost and timing of several of its biggest programs, including the Mars Sample Return initiative and the Artemis return-to-the-moon program.

The United States also faces increased competition from China, which has made rapid advancements in its space program over the past decade. Last year, China became the first country to collect and return samples from the far side of the moon, and Chinese officials have said they intend to launch a mission to retrieve samples from Mars and return them to Earth by around 2031.

Nelson, however, said that NASA’s plan is more intricate than what Chinese officials have spoken about publicly and that the U.S. program is centered on answering fundamental questions about Mars’ history, rather than being driven by a space race.

“You cannot compare the two missions,” he said. “Will people say that there’s a race? Well, of course people will say that. But it’s two totally different missions.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com