Yet another Hacker News

The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled

83 points Muhammad523 1 hour ago 35 comments

peri-cl 35 minutes ago | parent

whalesalad 34 minutes ago | parent

My brother in law (JPL) was telling me about this earlier in August. Big letdown but he assured me that they'll come back to earth some day ... just gonna sit up there a long time.

peri-cl 30 minutes ago | parent

This article only obliquely mentions in the last paragraphs, but there's a parallel Chinese program that recently brought back samples from the moon, and will attempt Mars sample return, launching in 2028,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3

It's not that there will be no Mars sample retrieval for humanity; it's rather that NASA has (?) given up on being the one to do it first.

reaperducer 28 minutes ago | parent

it's just that NASA has given up on being the one to do it first.

No need to. Mars delivers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/arts/who-owns-this-chunk-...

notabee 24 minutes ago | parent

Anyone wanting to be involved in the future of scientific research should probably start learning Mandarin. We're going the way of the Soviets, where political officers will quash any science that doesn't fit their ideology. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/trump-planning-to-ha...

Muhammad523 21 minutes ago | parent

I think that the scientific community really doesn't care about who will bring the samples back, but simply wheter someone will do it and share them with the world

lukeify 17 minutes ago | parent

The NASA/ESA MSR was of substantially higher quality, mind you. The M2020 rover specifically picked up samples of high scientific value to be returned. The Chinese return mission will only return what it finds from its direct landing site.

XorNot 7 minutes ago | parent

It's not like they're going to do it only once though, and some is a lot more then zero.

jmclnx 14 minutes ago | parent

> it's rather that NASA has (?) given up on being the one to do it first

I think the Trump admin decided since it will not make them a profit, like other scientific research already canceled, it is not worth doing.

GolfPopper 11 minutes ago | parent

"Profit" is too generous a motive. It didn't service the Big Man's ego, so it's gone. That they can do some damage by killing it just makes it sweeter. Trump is Teemu Saruman.

q_andrew 29 minutes ago | parent

This is so disappointing. The closest thing we ever discovered to life on other planets and the US won't even put 0.5% of budget towards retrieving it.

DiggyJohnson 28 minutes ago | parent

That would be a MASSIVE portion of the budget for a single discretionary item.

q_andrew 25 minutes ago | parent

I guess I should clarify, I meant 0.5% to NASA in general. Right now it's 0.33%. In 2002 it was 0.72%.

carabiner 22 minutes ago | parent

We cannot cancel anything ever because each program is only 0.001% of the federal budget. To do so would be stingy.

sophacles 8 minutes ago | parent

Or we could look at the utterly stupid things, like maybe stop having a failed war in Iran, and just not pay for those? Thats a very big chunk of budget. As a bonus it would bring gas prices down, reduce future spending in VA and other combat veteran costs, and just possible help make the case for reducing the size and expense of our military (while still maintaining the 2 largest air forces in the world).

method_capital 4 minutes ago | parent

That'd be a strawman.

What makes you think the poster you responded to agrees with the Iran war expense? He simply commented on how difficult it is to cut anything from the Federal budget. He's right. Remember when all the lunatics were out keying Teslas a few short months ago?

GardenLetter27 7 minutes ago | parent

And Europe is even worse, it's embarrassing.

Imnimo 25 minutes ago | parent

I never really understood why you'd have Perseverance drill the cores and then just leave them on the ground for an underdefined future mission to retrieve.

q_andrew 24 minutes ago | parent

Because the powers that be would have deemed a real plan as too expensive.

petcat 10 minutes ago | parent

> would have deemed a real plan as too expensive

Who are these "powers that be"? And do they have an infinite credit card? Could they really just do whatever they want and for some reason they choose not to?

Muhammad523 13 minutes ago | parent

Perseverance, obivously, has onboard instruments to analize the samples before dumping them on the ground

mring33621 23 minutes ago | parent

My bet is that the new Trump-flavored NASA still wants to do this, but without the Europeans.

LorenDB 16 minutes ago | parent

Knowing Jared Isaacman, he won't let MSR die without a fight. It wouldn't shock me to see NASA consider Rocket Lab's MSR proposal; they had submitted a pretty affordable proposal some time ago.

jumploops 22 minutes ago | parent

I worked on (a very small part of) the ExoMars rover (now called the Rosalind Franklin[0]).

It was supposed to launch in 2018, then was pushed to the early 2020s on a Russian rocket. For obvious reasons, it got pushed again, now launching in 2028.

The state of the world isn't great for space exploration, but I'm hopeful this mission will be revived at some point in the future.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin_(rover)

Muhammad523 20 minutes ago | parent

I'm curious to know on which part you worked on, could you tell us?

Teever 14 minutes ago | parent

As an outsider who is very interested in space exploration I'm very flummoxed by the state of space exploration.

With the price of launches so low compared to only 20 years ago due to advancements in launch technology and the increased cadence of launches it seems like it should be easier to do these kinds of missions and that there should be more, cheaper missions that are willing to take risks because the per mission cost is so much lower.

Can you comment on why that doesn't seem to be happening? Why aren't we covering Mars in cheap rovers and satellites?

throw0101c 22 minutes ago | parent

Howtown had a video on this a few weeks ago:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCgC1yA7_w

sertyrion 17 minutes ago | parent

That article is from January 6 2026. Not sure why it is being surfaced now.

formvoltron 5 minutes ago | parent

Space Farce

Aboutplants 5 minutes ago | parent

For better or worse it won’t be long until we get private exploration for minerals and water on the Moon and nearby planets, at a relatively decent scale (in comparative terms)

hackingonempty 3 minutes ago | parent

The USA can't afford to waste money shipping a bunch of rocks halfway across the Solar system just so some woke geeks can speculate if Mars in the past could have supported transgender athletes.

It would jeopardize important national security projects like the White House Ballroom, the Triumphal Arch, the Garden of Heroes and National Golf Course, and of course the Donald J. Trump Center for The Performing Arts and Memorial To That Loser That Got Assassinated.