NASA Administrator Bill Nelson left a final decision on a new mission architecture to the next NASA administrator working under the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump nominated entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman as the agency's 15th administrator last month.

NASA has arrived at two ways of returning samples collected on Mars to Earth. Now, the agency will test the options to see if the cache can make it back in the 2030s.

To maximize chances of successfully bringing the first Martian rock and sediment samples to Earth for the benefit of humanity, NASA announced Tuesday a new approach to its Mars Sample Return Program.

NASA's beleaguered Mars Sample Return program currently faces extreme costs of up to $11 billion and a timeline that could reach 2040.

The Mars Sample Return mission has been ranked as the highest priority by planetary scientists, who hope to find signs of ancient life on Mars.

NASA hopes a revised plan will get Mars samples back to Earth faster and cost less than the agency's original plan.

Anyone hoping for a clear path forward this year for NASA's imperiled Mars Sample Return mission will have to wait a little longer.

Dozens of samples of rock and sediment collected from Mars that could be used to detect ancient microbial life could be returned to Earth as soon as 2035 and as late as 2039, depending on the course of the next few months, NASA announced Tuesday.

The space agency will provide a broadcast update on the marquee mission that is intended to recover samples of Martian rock for study on Earth.

NASA recently deemed this situation unacceptable. In April 2024, agency chief Bill Nelson announced that an overhaul of the MSR strategy is in the works, saying that NASA will seek innovative new ideas from its research centers, private industry and academia.

The agency is starting down two different paths toward the samples' return, but only one will bring the red rocks home.