NASA will evaluate new Mars Sample return approaches in January 2027

NASA will begin studying fresh concepts in January 2027 for returning Perseverance’s stored Martian samples to Earth, after ending the prior return plan because costs kept rising.

Tiffany Morgan, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, unveiled the Perseverance Sample Retrieval Architecture effort on November 9. It restarted Mars sample return planning after the earlier architecture was shelved. She spoke at a virtual session, and the group involved was the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group.

The Perseverance Sample Retrieval Architecture group will start work in January 2027 and spend twelve months studying different methods for bringing samples back to Earth. The team is tasked with reviewing past work and current industry capabilities before proposing a way forward. Its final report is expected in winter 2027-2028. Before the report appears, the route for returning the rover’s cached material home is still undecided.

The agency is forming an internal group in January to review past lessons, earlier recommendations, current NASA capabilities and changing industry strengths, plus different ways to carry out the work. George Tahu described the team’s mandate at a virtual town hall. “The goal is to develop a high-level architecture approach and recommendations by the end of next year.” The panel will also decide if it can drop some constraints and if it should consider new purchasing methods.

Lawmakers and the agency raised alarms once Mars Sample Return costs climbed to $11 billion. Older studies estimated Mars Sample Return spending at about $11 billion, with samples coming back in 2040, a price and schedule NASA rejected. A later review found samples might arrive as soon as 2035 for roughly $8 billion.

Back in January 2025, then-NASA Administrator Bill Nelson put off a decision about how to carry out Mars Sample Return, leaving it to the incoming Trump administration. The fiscal year 2026 budget request sought to cancel Mars Sample Return. Congress supplied $110 million for Mars Future Missions without earmarking it for Mars Sample Return.

The United States and Europe developed designs for a Mars lander that would accept samples from Perseverance, launch a rocket into Mars orbit, and meet an ESA spacecraft for the trip home. The agencies have spent years preparing missions to move Martian material to Earth for study in advanced laboratories. Officials have not settled how the review will treat the program’s cost and a range of other issues.

Perseverance touched down on Mars in February 2021 and has gathered selected samples from Jezero Crater ever since. The rover seals some material in tubes, leaving certain tubes on the ground and keeping others onboard. Researchers believe the material could hold signs of ancient Martian life, and the samples may contain clues about past life on the planet. The rover is still gathering samples of tremendous scientific interest.

Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado Boulder said examining Martian samples could help spot dangerous substances, including chemicals in the soil, that might endanger astronauts on future crewed flights. He made the comments at the November 9 MEPAG meeting. Jakosky pointed to perchlorates, chloromethanes, and fine dust as threats to people and equipment.

He said the samples could assist spacesuit design, support a hunt for organisms that might interact with Earth life, give rehearsal for a round trip to Mars covering entry, descent, landing and ascent, and test planetary protection steps. The ideas came from a workshop held last May by Explore Mars, Inc.

Bringing samples back counts as a step in getting ready for future crewed flights to Mars, including work on hazardous chemical compounds, fine dust, regolith traits, and planetary protection procedures. The assessment connects robotic sample return to human mission planning. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has said on several occasions that bringing the samples back would rank among the most important scientific achievements ever.

China aims to launch Tianwen-3 toward Mars in 2028 and return samples to Earth in 2031. Tianwen-3 centers on a lander and an ascender, plus a service capsule, an orbiter, and a module for reentering Earth’s atmosphere. The mission targets liftoff around 2028 aboard two Long March-5 rockets from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan province, with a goal of bringing back about 500 grams of Martian material in 2031. China National Space Administration provided these details.

Only the United States and China have successfully landed on Mars. The first American landers were Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976, then Mars Pathfinder/Sojourner in 1997, Spirit and Opportunity in 2004, Phoenix in 2008, Curiosity in 2012, InSight in 2018, and Perseverance with the Ingenuity helicopter in 2021. Soviet efforts in the 1970s failed, and recent European tries also failed. China’s Tianwen-1 reached Mars in 2021 and worked for roughly one year.

Tianwen-2 is an active asteroid sample-return effort, separate from China’s Mars work. The European Space Agency plans to send the Rosalind Franklin rover, once called ExoMars, to Mars in 2028 with NASA as a partner, and the rover will not bring samples home. Curiosity and Perseverance are still operating on Mars. Curiosity reached a height of 1 kilometer above Gale Crater’s floor on August 26 and transmitted an image.