Proof of Life on Mars? NASA Plans to Return Tantalizing Rover Samples to Earth by 2035 | UAP

NASA officials have announced a new two-pronged approach to the troubled Mars Sample Return mission, which aims to bring soil samples collected by the Perseverance Rover back to Earth by 2035.

The return of the samples to Earth will provide potentially crucial insights into the geological history of the Red Planet, helping to prepare for human exploration that will occur there in the decades ahead and to “help NASA’s search for signs of ancient life,” the space agency said in a statement on January 3.

In 2022, an ambitious mission update fueled by tantalizing discoveries made by Perseverance set an even earlier return date of 2033. However, according to NASA Director Bill Nelson, the program’s budget overruns and increasingly delayed completion date led the agency to look for a new, more economically viable solution.

“The cost began to accelerate to the point that earlier this past year, it was thought that it could be as much as $11 billion, and you would not even get the samples back until 2040,” Nelson explained at a Tuesday media briefing outlining the new proposals. “That was just simply unacceptable.”

The agency responded in September 2024 with a new directive by accepting 11 scientific studies from within the NASA science community and its industry partners, proposing cheaper and more timely alternatives than the previous…more