Budget crisis: NASA looking for cheap ways to return soil samples from Mars to Earth

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is looking for a cheaper and easier way to bring Martian soil to Earth, as it has funding problems.

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Company officials said they expect alternative plans to be announced in the autumn or winter. NASA Assistant Director Nicky Fox said they would focus on "innovation and proven technologies" rather than huge technological leaps.

The move to a new strategy for returning Martian samples comes after an independent review commissioned by NASA last September concluded that the programme was hampered by "unrealistic budget and schedule expectations from the outset". It also found that the mission was "organised within an unwieldy structure" and "not organised for effective management".

This was compounded by severe spending cuts, as Congress has limited space programmes this year. Hundreds of people have been laid off from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, which is the centre of operations for the Mars mission.

It is worth noting that since 2021, the Perseverance rover has been collecting mineral samples from the bottom of an ancient Martian lake called Jezero Crater and sealing the material in tubes intended for future laboratory analysis and searching for possible signs of fossilised microbes.

Source: Reuters