Northrop Grumman has successfully ground tested the motor that could be used for the historic first orbital rocket launch from another planet. The solid rocket booster is intended to help return the ...

What is not controversial is that NASA needs a new spacecraft capable of relaying communications from Mars to Earth. NASA’s best communications relay today is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which ...

A mission called Mars Sample Return (MSR) is currently being cooked up over at NASA, and it's so incredibly complex and expensive that it has the agency's people running like crazy from place to place ...

Lockheed Martin is trying to position itself as a savior for many NASA missions currently facing the chopping block at the hands of the Trump administration. The administration has already detailed ...

Bringing samples from Mars back to Earth is one of NASA's most ambitious goals. The plan goes back to the 1970s, with NASA's robotic exploration program, when the first spacecraft landed on the ...

China is positioning itself to take the lead in one of the most coveted goals in planetary science—returning samples from Mars. The Tianwen-3 mission, set to launch in 2028, could bring Martian rocks ...

See Rocket Lab's "proposed mission architecture" for a Mars sample return mission in this animation. Credit: Rocket Lab ...

NASA has set a goal to return rock and soil samples from the surface of Mars in the 2030s. The mission would represent the first time scientific samples from another planet have been returned to Earth ...