Trump’s 2026 budget plan would cancel NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission. Experts say that’s a ‘major step back’

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NASA, Mars Rover was a tour award within the Jezero Crate after landing in February 2021. The robot was captured by the size of the car loyal to all parts of the region, as it spread with great caution those sealed capacities on the roof of the Red Planet, in addition to avoiding it from the inside. These holdings may bear signs of past life on this mysterious world, dust and career.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) for years has been By planning the plans with interest To send future spacecraft to Mars And withdraw those pieces that are installed, persevered, pieces, and a tattoo from the atmosphere to the ground for strict examination through modern equipment.

However, the year 2026 of the financial year of President Trump 2026, proposal to the budget plan issued on May 2 by the Department of Administration and Budget (OMB) calls for a 24.3 percent reduction To the highest financing in NASA and can reduce the budget of the space agency science 47 percent. There are victims resulting from this expected budget bomb, which is the Mars sample return project.

In fact, msr is Seasoning in the proposed 2026 budget for the White House As “on the budget starkly, whose goals will be achieved by the human tasks of Mars,” explaining that MSR is not to restore samples until the thirties of the twentieth century.

The White House’s initial budget says that its intention is in line with the management goals of “returning to the moon in front of China and placing a man on Mars”, while reducing the budget to low priority research and ending unimaginable tasks like MSR.

But some experts say that the task still has a wealth of scientific returns and space distance that corresponds to the administration’s batch to put humans on Mars.

Shock

To understand why this task has become very expensive, we must look to the history of Space Farid as a courtroom John HonoliAnd an old warrior in NASA for 36 years, he directed the designs of the moon and Mars mission. He is now a professor of practice at the Department of Aviation Engineering at the University of Texas A and M.

The return of the sample of Mars has been on NASA radar since the mid -seventies of the twentieth century to amend a Viking Mars Lander To make a relatively simple sample return, tell Connolly Space.com. “He always believed that he was the holy cup for the tasks of Mars antiquities, and it has been widely studied for five decades.”

Throughout these contracts, MSR also grew more complicated, Conoli said. The concepts of the original seventies did not address the latest requirements to protect planets or the need for carefully selected samples.

“The MSR requirement has increased naturally the complexity and cost in every repetition of the concept of the MSR mission until we reached the current design of a multi -barking multi -infection task,” said Honoli.

In fact, in recent years, multiple reviews of the MSR project by independent groups have reported the shock of the MSR poster.

A The last estimate was about 11 billion dollarsWith the return of samples to Earth in 2040, which NASA considers herself very expensive and is not accomplished in an acceptable time frame.

Last year, another evaluation group ended up finding samples from Mars Early from 2035 at a cost of about 8 billion dollars.

Reducing risk

“Our understanding of Mars has reached the point that the questions we ask in the best way can be treated with the samples that have been returned,” said Bruce Jacoski, chief research scientist and honorary professor in the laboratory in air and space physics at Colorado Bulder.

Jacoski said: “Making a decision not to return them, or postpone it until an unspecified time with human tasks is to take a great step in exploring the solar system, the universe and the continuing to develop our scientific understanding of the world around us.”

Jacoski added that the samples from Mars will enable “to reduce risks” for human missions. He added that it will allow us to determine the risk of human health from the dust of Mars and chemicals that may be present in the dust that may be harmful, such as Perkloz toxic Which was previously identified on Mars.

Jakosky also confirmed that the return of Mars samples to Earth would solve technical problems before sending humans. He said: “This will explain the first going and forth trip to Mars, and it will allow us to solve important problems in protecting the planets so that we do not put the Earth at risk from potential Meriki microbes.”

Like the mind is John Rommel, the former and founding president of the committee on the protection of the planets of COSPAR, which is international for experts. He previously worked at the NASA headquarters (1986 to 1993 and 1998 to 2008) as a great scientist in the Astronomy Astronomy Agency and a NASA planetary officer.

“There is a lot that we would like to know about the Mars-Dust environment, for example-before bathing in it. The return of the Mars sample is one of the ways to obtain this information, with proof that we can take a safe round trip. Doing something similar with a crew in the episode can provide faster progress for safe stay on Mars-safety should be a strong consideration for both the crew and return to the event to the Earth.”

Think forward

“Mars’s dream is back,” views Robert ZubreenFounder Mars Association. He looks at MSR’s cancellation differently, and connects his vision forward with Elon Musk’s Still-IN-THE-THE-THE-WORKS Spacex championship The launch system.

Zubrin imagines the initial use of many scouts of Mars, then a robotic trip, followed by humans to Mars.

“I think this is possible, but it requires a full focus by NASA, Spacex, Musk and Trump’s management,” Zubrin said. However, he claims that Trump’s budget for NASA is that she is now moving already to destroy the first two phases of the plan by trying to destroy NASA’s Mars exploration program.

“They need to change the path,” Zubreen advised. “If they do so, a wave of automatic scouts in 2028, a robotic trip in 2031, followed by a human mission in 2033, can still be withdrawn,” he said.

The basic logical basis

Related stories:

– Could Rocket Lab come to rescue NASA with the new Mars sample’s return plan?

– China moves the return of the Mars sample to two years, until 2028

– Samples of Mars in Mars must be returned to perseverance to Earth, and the scholars affirm

For Jacoski, he realizes that “science” is not the only reason for sending humans to Mars.

“NASA also determines the position and national inspiration as a convincing way. But all these things collapse if we end up sending people to a propaganda trick, to the so -called” flags and feet. “Jacoski said:” The basic logical basis for sending people should be convincing enough to justify the risks to these people and the cost of tasks. “

Science can provide a lot of this logical basis, and concludes Jacoski. “We have the opportunity today to implement the flag in a logical way from a software, budget and risks. Isn’t this what is going on around it to explore the space?”