Senate wants to kill Mars mission, and that's a good thing

[Legend]

The Senate just lobbed a tactical nuke at NASA's Mars Sample Return program | Ars Technica

NASA's Mars sample return keeps getting worse and worse every time they update their plans. It's incredibly embarrassing for the agency since internal politics are getting in the way of sound engineering.

Looks like it might not happen. Would be incredibly embarrassing to just leave all the already collected samples on Mars, but then NASA would at least have money for other projects.


Best solution would be to just contract SpaceX and Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman. Starship would be an incredibly inexpensive lander and a traditional single stage rocket could get the sample back to Earth no problem.