Too expensive, too slow: NASA asks for help with JPL’s Mars Sample Return mission

These tubes hold samples of Martian rocks and dust collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover for the Mars Sample Return mission. In the most recent planetary science decadal survey — a report prepared for NASA every 10 years by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — planetary scientists named the Mars Sample Return mission as the “highest scientific priority of NASA’s robotic exploration efforts this decade” and argued that the program should be completed “as soon as is practicably possible with no increase or decrease in its current scope.” But the authors cautioned that the ambitious mission shouldn’t come at the cost of other planetary science, suggesting a roughly $5-billion to $7-billion cap. Allowing Mars Sample Return’s costs to reach the $8 billion to $11 billion the review board estimated would require NASA “to cannibalize other programs, other science programs, and there are so many that are absolutely important,” Nelson said. “JPL remains strongly committed to the Mars Sample Return mission, the highest priority in the past two planetary science decadal surveys,” the institution said in a statement.