NASA seeking help to develop a lower-cost Mars Sample Return mission

Responding to an independent review of NASA's ambitious Mars Sample Return mission, agency officials said Monday they will seek fresh ideas from agency engineers, researchers and the private sector to come up with alternative mission designs to reign in sky-rocketing costs and get the precious samples back to Earth earlier.

The independent review board concluded last September, the complex multi-spacecraft sample return mission could cost as much as $11 billion to pull off — $4 billion to $5 billion more than originally expected — and not get samples back to Earth before 2040, even by stretching out development.

"The NASA team that looked at the Independent Review Board conclusions has said that they could string it out over time, but you're not going to get the samples back until 2040," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters. "That is unacceptable to wait that long. It's the decade of the 2040s that we're gonna be landing astronauts on Mars."