The Mars Sample Return mission is an ambitious endeavor that could see Martian geological specimens returned to Earth to search for signs of life on the Red Planet. When you purchase through links on ...

NASA's bold plan to get pristine samples of Mars to Earth for analysis is facing major challenges, according to a new report. Design, cost and scheduling are all significant obstacles, an audit report ...

NASA is looking for ways to get rock samples back from Mars for less than the $11 billion the agency would need under its own plan, so last month, officials put out a call to industry to propose ideas ...

It turns out the space industry has a lot of ideas on how to improve NASA’s $11 billion, 15-year plan to collect and return samples from Mars. Seven of these proposals have caught the agency’s ...

An asteroid sample stowed inside a NASA spacecraft is about to reach Earth after traveling for nearly 2½ years across space. It’s NASA’s first time collecting and returning an asteroid sample from ...

NASA has announced an overhaul to its plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth. Agency officials have decided to scrap parts of their original plan to cut down on the difficulty and cost. Instead ...

Render of the Tianwen-2 near-Earth asteroid/comet orbiter spacecraft. Credit: CNSA HELSINKI — China will launch the Tianwen-2 mission to sample a near-Earth asteroid next year, an official with the ...

NASA announced Friday that it will award contracts to seven companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, to study how to transport rock samples from Mars more cheaply back to Earth. The space agency ...

The historic collection of a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on Tuesday was almost too successful. Some of the sample is leaking into space, according to ...

The Perseverance rover has captured its first two slices of Mars. NASA’s latest Mars rover drilled into a flat rock nicknamed Rochette on September 1 and filled a roughly finger-sized tube with stone.