US Firm Wins NASA Contract To Bring Mars Samples Back To Earth

The "small, lightweight rocket" will be the first to take off from another planet, bringing back "rock, sediment and atmospheric samples from the surface of the Red Planet," NASA said in a statement.

Lockheed Martin's space division has won a NASA contract to build the rocket that will return the first Mars rock samples to Earth in the 2030s, the US space agency said Monday.

The "small, lightweight rocket" will be the first to take off from another planet, bringing back "rock, sediment and atmospheric samples from the surface of the Red Planet," NASA said in a statement.

NASA's Perseverance Rover has been collecting samples from various Martian areas since landing on Earth's neighbor a year ago.

The goal of the mission is to find traces of ancient life on the Red Planet. But these samples will have to be analyzed in laboratories back on Earth, capable of more sophisticated tests than anything that can be done on Mars.