NASA Says New Plan Needed To Return Rocks From Mars; Current Mission Design Can't Deliver Before 2040

SonicSpike shares a report: The quest to return rock materials from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul. The US space agency says the current mission design can't return the samples before 2040 on the existing funds and the more realistic $11bn needed to make it happen is not sustainable. Nasa is going to canvas for cheaper, faster "out of the box" ideas. It hopes to have a solution on the drawing board later in the year. Returning rock samples from Mars is regarded as the single most important priority in planetary exploration, and has been for decades. Just as the Moon rocks brought home by Apollo astronauts revolutionised our understanding of early Solar System history, so materials from the Red Planet are likely to recast our thinking on the possibilities for life beyond Earth.

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