a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, a Sample Return Lander, and an Earth Return Orbiter (ERO). Unlike the baseline plans, Rocket Lab’s will perform under a firm-fixed price contract to ensure ...

The orbiter would have to grab the samples ... At the current price tag, Mars Sample Return would "cannibalize" other NASA missions, Nelson said. So the agency is calling all hands on deck ...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The ...

The Curiosity rover detected the largest organic molecules to date on Mars, which may be fragments of fatty acids, or some of ...

The call for collaboration comes as NASA’s own Mars Sample Return program faces ... a lander and ascent vehicle and the Mars orbiter and Earth return orbiter respectively. Launches are scheduled ...

More recently, all eyes are on Mars, as multiple sample return missions are being planned. In order to ensure that samples from Mars cannot contaminate Earth life, the international Committee on ...

While NASA has long planned on a Mars Sample Return mission, a ballooning budget and an uncertain future may push the project as far back as 2040.

With the roughly 20-day wide launch window for the Mars 2020 mission rapidly ... already within the titanium sample tube in which it will remain until the sample return mission.

The Trace Gas Orbiter’s CaSSIS color camera ... and NASA and ESA are hoping to use a complex series of missions under the Mars Sample Return program to return them to Earth by the early 2030s.

which means there was enough time for life-forming chemistry to happen in these crater-lake environments on Mars,” said study coauthor Daniel Glavin, senior scientist for sample return at NASA ...