NASA announced Tuesday that it's exploring two landing options to move forward with its mission to retrieve environmental samples from Mars at a lower cost. The goal of the Mars Sample Return Program, ...

Rocket Lab proposed a Mars Sample Return (MSR) plan costing under $4 billion and aiming for sample return by 2031, significantly cheaper and faster than NASA's projected timelines. NASA's MSR program ...

NASA's troubled Mars sample-return program may have a new lifeline, in the form of a proposal from private space company Rocket Lab to help save the mission. However, while Perseverance has been ...

Bringing samples from Mars back to Earth is one of NASA's most ambitious goals. The plan goes back to the 1970s, with NASA's robotic exploration program, when the first spacecraft landed on the ...

Agency willing to take huge risks with human exploration, but not willing to do it for some dirt? Rocket Lab has been on a ...

NASA’s troubled Mars Sample Return program is stuck at a crossroads—and is likely to remain in limbo until at least 2026—agency officials said at a press briefing on Tuesday. To bring this precious ...

An illustration of the Perseverance rover using its drill on a rock sample on Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech For more than three years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been roaming the Martian landscape, ...

In what appears to be a jab at NASA, Rocket Lab this week unveiled its own plan to return rock and dust samples the space agency has been collecting from Mars’ Jezero Crater since 2021. NASA earlier ...

The precious Mars samples collected by the Perseverance rover could be coming to Earth sooner rather than later. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.