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The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled
- peri-cl 5d agohttps://archive.is/YYx0d https://archive.is/YYx0d
- whalesalad 5d agoMy brother in law (JPL) was telling me about this earlier in August. Big letdown but he assured me that they'll come back to earth some day ... just gonna sit up there a long time.
- peri-cl 5d agoThis 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, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3 It's not that there will be no Mars sample retrieval for humanity; it's rather that NASA has (?) given up on being the one to do it first.
- reaperducer 4d agoit's just that NASA has given up on being the one to do it first. No need to. Mars delivers: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/arts/who-owns-this-chunk-of-mars-jeanine-pirro-says-america-does-now.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/arts/who-owns-this-chunk-...
- notabee 4d agoAnyone wanting to be involved in the future of scientific research should probably start learning Mandarin. We're going the way of the Soviets, where political officers will quash any science that doesn't fit their ideology. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/trump-planning-to-hand-veto-power-over-nih-grants-to-political-appointee/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/trump-planning-to-ha...
- q_andrew 5d agoThis is so disappointing. The closest thing we ever discovered to life on other planets and the US won't even put 0.5% of budget towards retrieving it.
- ModernMech 4d agoRichest man in the world who very famously wants to go to Mars and has no problem opening his pocketbook to achieve political ends should be funding this himself after he was given carte balance to comb through the budget and got rid of anything he didn't personally like.
- superxpro12 4d agobest we can do is buying communications hubs and converting them into fascist propaganda machines
- DiggyJohnson 4d agoThat would be a MASSIVE portion of the budget for a single discretionary item.
- q_andrew 4d agoI guess I should clarify, I meant 0.5% to NASA in general. Right now it's 0.33%. In 2002 it was 0.72%.
- Imnimo 4d agoI 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.