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,
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...
The US is withdrawing from middle east and europe.
The fall will be greater than USSR withdrawing from stans + warsaw pact.
US enemies have cornered every information source to the compromised president.
Without removal of Elon Thiel Trump Vance Johnson Miller Witkoff Kushner Gorka + there is nothing we can do.
Elon has control over government spending and R&D with DOGE while Thiel has said he wants to turn the US into a weimar republic with Vance as GOP co-finance chair.
Both the GOP and DEM seem to have have been compromised since during the Obama admin. Put the date at just before Obama + congress failed to intervene in Syria. It is astounding to me how the DEM party decided to partner with a DSA progressive alliance which has core anti-NATO values.
I strongly believe syria vote was an attempt by the GOP to get Obama to buy into intervention in a decades long plan plan already in action but backfired and favored retreating. If that was not the reason, we have much much bigger problems internally.
Nothing has made sense since 2011.
US will never have cheap gas again because the logistic backbone Trump is removing from Europe directly prevents intervention in the middle east
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.
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
"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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
The US is withdrawing from middle east and europe.
The fall will be greater than USSR withdrawing from stans + warsaw pact.
US enemies have cornered every information source to the compromised president.
Without removal of Elon Thiel Trump Vance Johnson Miller Witkoff Kushner Gorka + there is nothing we can do.
Elon has control over government spending and R&D with DOGE while Thiel has said he wants to turn the US into a weimar republic with Vance as GOP co-finance chair.
Both the GOP and DEM seem to have have been compromised since during the Obama admin. Put the date at just before Obama + congress failed to intervene in Syria. It is astounding to me how the DEM party decided to partner with a DSA progressive alliance which has core anti-NATO values.
I strongly believe syria vote was an attempt by the GOP to get Obama to buy into intervention in a decades long plan plan already in action but backfired and favored retreating. If that was not the reason, we have much much bigger problems internally.
Nothing has made sense since 2011.
US will never have cheap gas again because the logistic backbone Trump is removing from Europe directly prevents intervention in the middle east
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.
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
> 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.
"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.
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-...
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)
I'm curious to know on which part you worked on, could you tell us?
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?
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.
Perseverance, obivously, has onboard instruments to analize the samples before dumping them on the ground
Because the powers that be would have deemed a real plan as too expensive.
> 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?
https://archive.is/YYx0d
Howtown had a video on this a few weeks ago:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCgC1yA7_w
That article is from January 6 2026. Not sure why it is being surfaced now.
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.
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.
That would be a MASSIVE portion of the budget for a single discretionary item.
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%.
We cannot cancel anything ever because each program is only 0.001% of the federal budget. To do so would be stingy.
My bet is that the new Trump-flavored NASA still wants to do this, but without the Europeans.
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.