NASA has arrived at two ways of returning samples collected on Mars to Earth. Now, the agency will test the options to see if the cache can make it back in the 2030s.

The agency is starting down two different paths toward the samples' return, but only one will bring the red rocks home.

After a long career as a politician from Florida, former astronaut Bill Nelson has served as NASA's administrator for the last three and a half years. He intends to resign from this position in about two weeks when President Joe Biden ends his term in the White House.

NASA hopes a revised plan will get Mars samples back to Earth faster and cost less than the agency's original plan.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson left a final decision on a new mission architecture to the next NASA administrator working under the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump nominated entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman as the agency's 15th administrator last month.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants NASA to relocate its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida's Brevard County.

In April, after an independent review found “near zero probability” of Mars Sample Return making its proposed 2028 launch date, NASA put out a request for alternative proposals to all of its centers and the private sector. JPL was forced to compete for what had been its own project.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy hosted a conversation with astronauts Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams and

NASA has announced the next steps for its beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission, the ambitious plans to retrieve multiple samples collected on the Red Planet, so they can be analyzed by more sophisticated labs on Earth.

To maximize chances of successfully bringing the first Martian rock and sediment samples to Earth for the benefit of humanity, NASA announced Tuesday a new approach to its Mars Sample Return Program.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, the agency's research and development center at the cutting edge of space exploration for decades, is officially under an evacuation order due to a spreading wildfire. Ironically,