CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth is on hold until there’s a faster, cheaper way, space agency officials said Monday. NASA’s rover Perseverance already has gathered 24 core samples in tubes since landing in 2021 at Mars’ Jezero Crater, an ancient river delta. NASA’s science mission chief, Nicky Fox, refused to speculate …
The recent Nasa Osiris-rex asteroid sample return mission has the astrobiology community excited, as scientific researchers attempt to learn new things – and secrets – about the solar system. In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a 7-member team, funded by the John Templeton Foundation and led by Jim Cleaves and Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution …
NASA will launch two more mini helicopters to Mars in its effort to return Martian rocks and soil samples to Earth. The most recent sample, a sedimentary rock, holds the greatest promise of containing possible evidence of ancient Martian life, said Arizona State University’s Meenakshi Wadhwa, chief scientist for the retrieval effort. NASA officials said Perseverance’s impressive performance at Mars …
NASA has approved the Mars Sample Return multi-mission effort to advance to the next phase in preparation to bring the first pristine samples from Mars back to Earth. In the next steps of the MSR campaign, NASA and the European Space Agency will provide respective components for a Sample Retrieval Lander mission and an Earth Return Orbiter mission, with launches …
