Samples before space suits: America must be smart about its mission to Mars 

On day one of this administration, the president included his ambitions for Mars in his inaugural address, and again several weeks later to a joint session of Congress: “We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars, and even far beyond.”

President Trump’s vision for Mars is correct, and now there is a plan for the next steps in how he achieves it. 

The U.S. has led the world in the exploration of Mars since Vikings I and II landed in 1976. We now stand on the precipice of two ultimate achievements: the return of samples from Mars to Earth, and sending the first humans — Americans — to the Martian surface. 

The fiscal 2026 presidential budget request proposed “to terminate the Mars Sample Return Program given that current architecture options remain unaffordable.” But, it adds: “It is anticipated that future missions to Mars will return samples for study on Earth.” 

We need those samples robotically returned for study on Earth. Delaying Mars Sample Return or waiting for astronauts to pick them up will make the human exploration of Mars significantly more expensive and dangerous — and for the first time ever, almost certainly cede decades of U.S. space exploration leadership to China. 

A lower-cost robotic Mars Sample Return would more than pay for itself from savings realized by simplified human missions. Martian soil has substances known to be toxic, as well as uncharacterized biological potential. Without Mars Sample Return, human mission designs must account for the full range of possibilities and the most demanding scenarios.  

Laboratory tests are needed to make direct measurements of the Mars samples to determine concentrations and forms of toxic materials to understand threats and develop solutions. This will be needed to design spacesuits and protect astronauts from the fine martian dust. It allows risk mitigation to shift from large and expensive requirements to quantifiable ones with reduced uncertainties. 

While no martian life has been detected yet, our exploration has shown that much of Mars would previously have been habitable, and parts of Mars may currently still be habitable. In advance of humans to Mars, we need to robotically return samples in a highly controlled manner to satisfy planetary protection back-contamination requirements to ensure that Mars does not have organisms that might impact human health or have adverse effects on Earth’s biosphere. 

Mars Sample Return will accelerate U.S. leadership in space. Mars is several hundred times farther from Earth than the Moon. Using current propulsion technologies, a Mars round trip will take up to three years, with minimal abort opportunities, as compared to Apollo’s round trip of days. Even then, there were three uncrewed and four crewed missions before Apollo 11, the first Moon landing. Completing Mars Sample Return supports technology demos needed for human missions, such as advancing from the current precision landing (7-10 km) to pinpoint landing (~100 m) to put astronauts in proximity to safe sites and pre-positioned supplies.  

Mars Sample Return also achieves a profound international first: the first samples — with potential for evidence of life — returned from Mars. These samples might once and for all answer the fundamental question of “Are we alone in the universe,” and that is a question we most certainly want the United States to answer first. 

Lockheed Martin, my former employer, has been studying Mars Sample Return missions for more than 50 years, and is confident it can deliver an end-to-end architecture for under $3 billion — less than half of previous estimates — by leveraging heritage components, reducing design complexity, and streamlining the program structure. They have built and flown four highly successful Mars landers and four highly successful Mars orbiters, as well as pioneered all three of NASA’s previous sample return missions (returning material from a comet, the solar wind and an asteroid), and have established credibility and mission success across a wide variety of additional deep space missions, from Venus to Saturn. 

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, Perseverance or “Percy,” at Jezero Crater has been caching an unparalleled set of samples that will shed more light on the history of Mars than all previous Mars missions combined. China has announced it plans to launch a sample return mission to Mars in 2028, with an Earth return likely in 2031. If we forgo the timely return of Percy’s superior set of samples, it will be China that leaps ahead. 

Mars soil and dust are uniquely different, and potentially dangerous — returning samples should precede astronauts going to Mars, while also maintaining our nation’s pre-eminence in Mars exploration as NASA lays the groundwork for the next giant leap. 

Ben Clark has been a member of the science teams of every NASA mission to explore the surface of Mars, and designed the instrument on Viking that made the first analysis of martian soil. He was chief scientist for deep space exploration at Lockheed Martin. Currently, he helps analyze chemical compositions of the diverse samples the Perseverance rover has been acquiring during its multi-year trek on Mars.