US President Donald Trump Seeks to Cancel NASA's Mars Sample Return

scientificamerican.com

33 pointsnamanyayg6 comments

While I don't take what Musk says very seriously he's talking about sending a Starship rocket with a robot on to Mars next year. Maybe something like that could be combined with the return mission? https://www.foxnews.com/tech/spacex-send-starship-mars-next-...

NASA has said it's looking:

>NASA announced Tuesday it may turn to Elon Musk's SpaceX or Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin to help reduce the soaring costs of returning Martian rocks collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-nasa-eyes-spacex-blue-mars.htm...

The writing has been on the wall for the MSR mission for quite some time. As disappointing as this is, I don't think it's fair to blame this all on the Trump admin.

Any search term or article to share about the funding being at risk since before Trump? This is the first I’m hearing about the mission

Anecdotal, but I am in the supply chain for this mission, and there have been pauses in work over the last few years with a general sense that the mission might ultimately get cancelled.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/the-senate-just-lobbed...

https://www.space.com/nasa-revamp-mars-sample-return-plan

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