NASA to Pick New Mars Sample Return Plan by Year-End

NASA is making progress toward deciding a revised plan for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission by the end of this year. The goal? To lower costs and speed up the timeline. Recently, NASA received 12 studies exploring different approaches to MSR. These studies come from companies like Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and SpaceX, as well as NASA's own teams. They looked at full mission plans, ways to shrink the Mars Ascent Vehicle, and new ways to get samples back to Earth.

An independent review team, called the MSR Strategy Review, will evaluate these studies. This team includes former NASA administrators and experts. They'll provide recommendations to NASA's leadership by December. The aim is to find the best way to return Mars samples to Earth by 2040, ideally for less than $11 billion. NASA is staying on track with its schedule, despite the complexity of the task. The next steps include a confirmation review, which will set formal cost and schedule commitments. This depends on the decision about the MSR architecture. Some committee members are already feeling more optimistic about the mission's future compared to last year.

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