Costly Mars Sample Return is squeezing smaller NASA missions.

The article focuses on the escalating costs and budgetary challenges facing NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a high-priority, multispacecraft effort to return Martian rock samples to Earth by as early as 2033. Originally estimated at around $4 billion, the mission's cost has risen to approximately $6 billion, with some projections exceeding $8 billion, prompting concerns from Congress about potential cancellation or strict budget caps. These overruns have led to delays and funding cuts for other NASA planetary science missions, affecting research teams and university projects. While NASA is pursuing design simplifications to reduce expenses, the mission's future depends heavily on an upcoming independent cost review, with some experts warning that cancellation could shift funding away from planetary science toward human spaceflight programs like Artemis.