The aerospace giant says it can revive Mars Sample Return with a leaner, lower-cost approach drawing on proven designs.

In the future, the team behind this study intends to compare their models to actual rock and soil collected from the Red Planet and returned to Earth by NASA's proposed Mars Sample Return Mission.

The budget will be cutting numerous programs, including the Mars Sample Return mission, a joint NASA and European Space Agency campaign to send Martian soil and rock samples collected by the ...