mars sample return mission
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Layoffs Loom at NASA After Termination of Over 100 Contractors Amid Mars Budget Constraints
NASA is scaling back on its ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, fearing federal budget cuts to the space agency’s plan to bring back rock and dust from the Red Planet, which has come under heavy scrutiny for having unrealistic costs and timelines. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) reportedly laid off 100 contractors last week…
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NASA ‘Pauses’ Mars Sample Return to Get a Grip on the Mission
NASA is pulling back from its Mars Sample Return program (MSR) in order to develop a revised way of bringing the Martian rocks back to Earth after its original plan was deemed unrealistic. During a meeting of the Planetary Science Advisory Committee on Monday, NASA officials announced that the space agency is pausing work on…
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NASA Tests the First Rocket to Launch From the Surface of Another Planet
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been diligently collecting rocky samples from Mars to stow them away on the planet’s dusty surface while engineers work to develop a rocket that can launch off of another world as a crucial step in the process of retrieving the samples. The team behind the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) recently tested…
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Mars Rover Being Packed Into Storage After Russian Launch Scrapped
The European Space Agency is scrambling to figure out the ExoMars rover’s next-possible launch window after the agency suspended cooperation with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.