NASA hopes a revised plan will get Mars samples back to Earth faster and cost less than the agency's original plan.

The Perseverance rover has been collecting Martian rock samples since 2021, but NASA is still figuring out how to bring them back to Earth.

Two new potential strategies for returning crucial samples from Mars to Earth by the 2030s are now on the table, according to NASA. The proposals present alternatives to the original Mars Sample Return program.

The Mars Sample Return mission has been ranked as the highest priority by planetary scientists, who hope to find signs of ancient life on Mars.

In April, after an independent review found “near zero probability” of Mars Sample Return making its proposed 2028 launch date, NASA put out a request for alternative proposals to all of its centers and the private sector. JPL was forced to compete for what had been its own project.

NASA announced Tuesday it had narrowed down to two options the reworked Mars Sample Return mission aiming for a cheaper and quicker completion than the version that was killed last year. One would be to use a version of the sky crane system that was used to land both the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity safely on the Martian surface.

Previously, the Mars Sample Return mission had been estimated to cost around 11 billion dollars and would not return a sample until the 2040's, noted Nelson, who said a re-evaluation of the mission had to be done because "this thing had gotten out of control."

NASA said in its announcement it is changing the plan for the spacecraft that will land on Mars to retrieve the samples and exploring two new, different options. One of the option