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Mars rocks await a ride to Earth — can NASA deliver?

The stakes are high as the agency contemplates the technological and financial hurdles ahead for its sample-return mission.
By
  1. Alexandra Witze

For decades, scientists who study Mars have watched in envy as spacecraft brought pieces of the Moon, chunks of asteroids and even samples of the solar wind to Earth to be studied. Now some of those researchers might finally be on track to receive rocks from the red planet — but only if NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) can pull off a complex and daring mission.

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Nature 616, 230-231 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00927-z

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