NASA’s plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth is on hold until there’s a faster, cheaper way, space agency officials said on Monday.
Retrieving Mars soil and rocks has been on NASA’s to-do list for decades, but the date kept moving forward, as costs ballooned.
A recent independent review put the total cost at $US8 billion ($12.45 billion) to $US11 billion ($17.14 billion) with an arrival date of 2040, about a decade later than advertised.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that’s too much and too late.
He’s asking private industry and the space agency’s centres to come up with other options to revamp the project.
With NASA facing across-the-board budget cuts, he wants to avoid gutting other science projects to finance the Mars sample project.
