NASA, the same agency that once flung a car-sized rover onto Mars with all the casual grace of a cosmic dart thrower, is now having to take a long hard look at its Mars Sample Return program and ask the age-old question: just how much is this going to cost us?
The Mars Sample Return, or MSR for acronym enthusiasts, is the ambitious attempt to scoop up bits of Martian rock and dust and bring them home to Earth for a proper backstage analysis, ideally without any alien hitchhikers. Originally estimated at a few billion dollars, the program’s price tag has swelled with the determined persistence of a college student’s meal plan debt, now hovering somewhere between thirteen and eleven billion dollars depending on who you ask and how strongly they squint at the spreadsheet.
In a report published by the agency’s own independent review board last September, the mission was deemed technically feasible but, in NASA’s own reserved words, “not executable” within the current budget and timeline. By “not executable,” they essentially meant that if this were a Hollywood blockbuster, the studio would have already pulled the plug, fired the director, and quietly greenlit a sequel to something with talking animals instead.
Despite the budget bloat, the mission is still drawing considerable scientific excitement. The goal is to finally analyze cached samples collected by the Perseverance rover, which has been diligently stashing them across the Martian landscape like a very slow and surprisingly precise squirrel. Scientists believe these precious soil samples could hold clues to the ancient habitability of Mars, possible microbial life, and perhaps the answer to whether we are, or are not, alone in this vast and occasionally confusing galaxy.
The problem is that bringing home bits of a foreign planet is, unsurprisingly, not cheap. It would involve multiple spacecraft, including a new lander, a fetch rover with the job description of space butler, a launch system capable of escaping Mars gravity, and an orbiter to catch the precious cargo mid-space in what amounts to a robotic relay race spanning hundreds of millions of miles.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, ever the master of understatement, referred to the current strategy as “not viable.” He has since tasked the agency with considering alternative, more affordable concepts and invited ideas from industry and international partners, perhaps in the hope that someone somewhere has figured out how to do interplanetary logistics on something less than a Bezos-level budget.
Still, NASA isn’t pulling the plug just yet. An updated plan is expected by the fall of 2024, which in government program time is roughly tomorrow if you squint optimistically. Meanwhile, the Perseverance rover continues collecting samples, patiently awaiting an interplanetary Uber that has yet to be ordered.
The red planet might be dry, but NASA’s budget forecasts are looking downright parched.