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A NASA rover on Mars has been collecting samples of rock and sealing them into metal tubes. NASA wants to launch a robotic mission that would pick up these samples and would return them to Earth. That has been a challenge. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce has an update.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: Samples of rock have been brought back from the moon, from asteroids but never from another planet. So when NASA designed the Perseverance rover, they sent along tubes made of titanium. The rover has been busy filling them up with samples of rocks, dirt, the Martian atmosphere. NASA wants to bring 30 of these tubes back to Earth so that their contents can be analyzed in a secure lab. The goal is to learn more about the history of the red planet, such as whether it ever had life.
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BILL NELSON: We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's NASA administrator Bill Nelson speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday. He says the original plan to get the rocks back was turning out to be slow and expensive. Projected costs ballooned to $11 billion, with a return date as far off as 2040.
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NELSON: This thing has gotten out of control.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: So last year top officials pulled the plug and hit the reset button. NASA solicited ideas from industry and outside experts. And now Nelson says NASA will spend some time simultaneously exploring two different mission options. One will rely on tried-and-true technologies for getting to Mars that have been used in previous missions, plus simplified components of the original plan. The other option will take advantage of emerging commercial capabilities. NASA will work on the engineering for both and eventually pick one.
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NELSON: The final decision is likely to come in 2026.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Planetary scientists, who have long been eager to bring Mars rocks home, paid close attention to his words. Jack Mustard is with Brown University.
JACK MUSTARD: I'm heartened to hear the administrator say, you know, I can see a path forward. I mean, I think that's the bottom line, right? They see a path forward.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That was by no means guaranteed. This sense of relief was echoed by Vicky Hamilton, a planetary geologist with the Southwest Research Institute, although she had been hoping to hear what the mission would look like.
VICKY HAMILTON: I am disappointed a little bit that we still don't know exactly what the architecture will be.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Still, she says NASA really hasn't had much time to think about the various proposals it got from industry.
HAMILTON: So I can understand that they want to take a little more time to look at that.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And she was happy to hear that NASA wants to retrieve all 30 samples rather than making do with a smaller selection. She says these carefully assembled samples could reveal whether or not Mars was ever home to ancient life.
HAMILTON: We're going to the right place and collecting the right samples to do the best job we can at trying to answer that question.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The incoming Trump administration and Congress will weigh in on all this, plus the European Space Agency, NASA's partner in this effort. Meanwhile, China has been pursuing its own project to collect and return a Martian rock. Nelson called it more of a grab-and-go mission. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
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