Lockheed Martin Wants To Bring Mars Rover's Samples To Earth If NASA Can't
Lockheed Martin has announced the details of a proposal to take over NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, tasked with retrieving the samples that the Perseverance rover on the red planet has already collected. These samples have great scientific value, including the possibility of the evidence of life. While originally conceived as an in-house job, NASA has since realized that its version of the plan would cost at least $7 billion, a figure sometimes known by its scientific name, "too much." That caused the space agency to solicit proposals for a cheaper solution back in 2024, including from Lockheed.
In a press release, the venerable aerospace company has declared that it can get a couple of Mars rocks back to our planet for a "firm-fixed price" of less than $3 billion. It's going to accomplish that smaller cost by making everything, well, smaller. The lander (which sets down on Mars), ascent vehicle (which launches back out to space from the surface), and Earth entry system (which gets through Earth atmosphere on the voyage home) will all be downsized.
Beyond the amount itself, the fact that the price is fixed ought to be appealing. NASA, bless its heart, has a habit of rocketing wildly over budget. Former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in 2024 that the cost of MSR might have swelled as high as $11 billion, a figure sometimes known by its scientific name, "way too much." If Lockheed commits to the $3 billion price tag, that would be a welcome change. Assuming, of course, that it isn't forced to cut corners to do it.
Lockheed Martin does have some Martian experience. As it is happy to point out in its proposal, the company participated in every single mission to Mars in NASA's history, including designing and building half of all the spacecraft involved. It also operates all three of NASA's orbital craft around the red planet. Beyond Mars (how many companies can say "beyond Mars"?), Lockheed built all three return sample vehicles that NASA has used in other missions, including to and from an asteroid in the OSIRIS-REx mission.
This is only a proposal for now. NASA needs to decide whether or not to choose it, but the space agency is in a weird place right now, with the Trump administration handing in its own proposal: Massive budget cuts across the board. Not impossible to imagine that the MSR mission will just be scrapped altogether, leaving Perseverance's samples to collect red dust with no point.
Or will they? China wants to launch to launch a sample return mission of its own in 2028, and per Space News, it wants to invite other countries along for the ride. If NASA's samples are still sitting there, there's no real reason the Chinese, maybe with a little Russian support, couldn't snatch them for themselves.
