NASA's Mars Sample Return Mission Is Dead After Congress Backs Cancellation
The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled
Congress has effectively killed NASA's Mars Sample Return program, backing the White House's effort to cancel the mission that would have brought Perseverance rover's rock cores to Earth. The compromise spending bill shifts $110 million to a 'Mars Future Missions' program, leaving dozens of samples—including one with a potential biosignature—stranded on Mars. The decision also affects ESA's Earth Return Orbiter and raises questions about U.S. leadership as China advances its own Mars sample-return plans.
When we've got memos coming out saying we want to be the dominant power in space, I wonder how we leave something this ambitious behind.
- jumploops
I worked on (a very small part of) the ExoMars rover (now called the Rosalind Franklin[0]).
It was supposed to launch in 2018, then was pushed to the early 2020s on a Russian rocket. For obvious reasons, it got pushed again, now launching in 2028.
The state of the world isn't great for space exploration, but I'm hopeful this mission will be revived at some point in the future.
- angelgonzales
This mission is representative of what JPL has become. Leadership there increased the cost of the program to $11B and would not bring the samples back until 2040, they also designed the mission around legacy rockets like Ariane 64 instead of working to lower costs and increase capacity by working with industry and designing around Starship or New Glenn. The moon missions brought back 842 pounds of rocks and MSL would bring back 1.1 pounds. It’s directionally better to wait for manned missions to Mars so we can bring back tons of rocks or even do the research on Mars itself. It seems like the JPL mission is maximized to provide jobs to researchers and maximized for mission complexity rather than just buying rocks from a contractor with quoted price and lead time.
I’d be interested in working there to help accelerate the program but I’m not if I would get support internally.
- aarjaneiro
"makes sense, it's financially unfeasible"
> Engages in pointless wars
- peri-cl
This article only obliquely mentions in the last paragraphs, but there's a parallel Chinese program that recently brought back samples from the moon, and will attempt Mars sample return, launching in 2028,
- sertyrion
That article is from January 6 2026. Not sure why it is being surfaced now.
- maxdo
Total starship mission including launches is 15 billion to date , and it’s on the verge of entering limited commercial service . Maybe without re use but as a much cheaper super heavy rocket , like 10x cheaper without re use already .
It make sense to a certain extent to focus on a capability researches vs largely throw away mission to deliver a few rocks for 20 billions.
- Imnimo
I never really understood why you'd have Perseverance drill the cores and then just leave them on the ground for an underdefined future mission to retrieve.
- lasky
This article reads like self-pity propaganda from the institutions and scientists who benefited from the old NASA funding model and now see that model being dismantled.
The underlying program was in trouble. NASA had already concluded before Isaacman took over that the existing Mars Sample Return architecture had become a roughly $8–11 billion project with samples potentially not reaching Earth until around 2040.
So yes: NASA killed the bloated $11B / 2040 version of Mars Sample Return.
Isaacman is pushing NASA’s Mars program toward cheaper, faster, modular missions, greater use of commercial spacecraft and launch providers, and infrastructure that can support both science and eventual human exploration.
That makes the “NASA is abandoning Mars science” framing fake news. NASA is abandoning a specific, extremely expensive architecture.
Isaacman has explicitly left open the possibility of retrieving Perseverance’s samples through a different approach.
The real question is to what extent the new model will actually deliver the samples faster and for dramatically less money.
- peri-cl
- trebligdivad
The Japanese 'Martian Moons exploration' mission is launching to Phobos next month and doing a sample return; how hard would a martian to phobos sample moving mission be that could then be collected off Phobos sometime?