Will Mars Samples Ever Reach Earth? NASA Runs Out of Funding

NASA Lacks the Funds to Bring Mars Samples Home

Since 2021, the Perseverance rover has been drilling into Martian rock inside the Jezero Crater. It has carefully collected priceless samples of rock and dust—materials that could finally answer whether life ever existed on the Red Planet. Now, however, it appears that NASA no longer has the funding needed to bring these samples back to Earth.

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) program was designed as a historic breakthrough in planetary science. Yet in January 2026, the U.S. Congress passed a federal budget that conspicuously excludes funding for retrieving the collected samples. While the bill restores financing for most of NASA’s scientific missions, MSR was left entirely unfunded.

According to Nature, this outcome did not come as a complete surprise. The program’s estimated cost ballooned to $11 billion in 2023—placing it in the same financial league as the James Webb Space Telescope. In early 2025, NASA also admitted it still lacked a finalized, technically viable retrieval plan. At the same time, political pressure for deep budget cuts had been building for months.

Will the Mars Sample Mission Be Canceled Forever?

Although the Mars Sample Return program has not been formally canceled, many experts believe the project, in its current form, is effectively finished.

The spending package passed on January 8, 2026, by the House of Representatives effectively cancels the Mars Sample Return program, eliminating nearly all funding for future missions,

– Scientific American reported.

Other outlets, including Universe Today, argue that this decision marks the end of MSR as originally conceived rather than the permanent abandonment of the idea itself. NASA may eventually propose a scaled-down, less expensive mission—or attempt to involve private industry partners to reduce costs.

One possible fallback remains the Mars Future Missions program, which focuses on developing key technologies such as landing systems for Mars’s thin atmosphere. These tools could support future sample-return concepts. The current budget allocates $110 million to this initiative.

Why Is the Mars Sample Return So Vital?

Canceling the program would be a severe setback for planetary science. The samples collected by Perseverance contain chemical signatures resembling those produced by microbial life on Earth. Studying them in advanced laboratories on Earth could provide the most definitive evidence yet of ancient life on Mars.

This sample is worth several billion dollars because it can answer an existential question humanity has asked since the beginning of science,

– says Ryan Ogliore, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida.

Some researchers warn that if the samples are not retrieved within the next few decades, their scientific value could decline. Future robotic missions—or eventual crewed expeditions—may return much larger quantities of material, reducing the uniqueness of Perseverance’s cache.

Mars Samples in the Geopolitical Race

Beyond science, the fate of Mars Sample Return has strategic implications. Without the program, the United States risks falling behind in the global competition for space leadership. China, in particular, could seize the opportunity.

The Chinese Tianwen-3 mission aims to collect and return its own Martian samples by 2031. If successful, it would mark the first sample-return mission from Mars—and a major geopolitical milestone.

For now, Perseverance will continue drilling and storing its precious cargo on the Martian surface. Yet all indications suggest that the original Mars sample return mission has stalled indefinitely, leaving humanity’s most valuable extraterrestrial specimens stranded on the Red Planet far longer than originally planned.

Read this article in Polish: Próbki z Marsa nie trafią na Ziemię? NASA nie ma pieniędzy