An exploding budget and an unraveling schedule spell disappointment for NASA's mission to learn more about Mars's history.

NASA proposes a faster, cheaper plan to bring Mars samples to Earth, aiming for delivery by the 2030s while cutting costs significantly.

NASA has unveiled two revamped plans to bring Mars samples to Earth in the 2030s, reducing costs by nearly half from its initial $11 billion proposal while expediting the timeline.

NASA is pitching a cheaper and quicker way of getting rocks and soil back from Mars, after seeing its original plan swell to $11 billion. Administrator Bill Nelson presented a revised scenario Tuesday,

NASA announced Tuesday that it is exploring two options to move forward with its mission to return samples from Mars at a lower cost.

NASA sees two paths for saving its beleaguered plan to retrieve materials from the Red Planet but won’t choose between them until 2026

American space agency NASA announced it is looking at two ways of landing hardware on Mars for the Sample Return mission, will decide in late 2026

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson left a final decision on a new mission architecture to the next NASA administrator working under the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump nominated entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman as the agency's 15th administrator last month.

"What our wizards at NASA have figured out is that they've come up now with a solution to get the successful outcome we want, and that is, we want to return 30 titanium tubes as soon as possible ...

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."

The agency is starting down two different paths toward the samples' return, but only one will bring the red rocks home.

NASA is pitching a cheaper and quicker way of ... “We want to return 30 titanium tubes as soon as possible at the cheapest price,” Nelson said. The space agency said it is considering two ...