Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: NASA

A long-term Holy Grail goal at NASA has been the ability to robotically haul back to Earth specimens from the Red Planet.

A new initiative for Mars Sample Return (MSR) is about to be kick-started by NASA called the Perseverance Sample Retrieval Architecture, or PSRA in space shorthand. The plan is to establish a fresh NASA strategy for lobbing back to our planet Mars collectibles.

The intent of this new activity is to develop “impartial recommendations” for retrieving the Martian samples collected by Perseverance and delivering them to Earth.

For details, go to my new Space.com story – “NASA kick-starts a fresh push to bring Mars samples home” – at:

https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/nasa-kick-starts-a-fresh-push-to-bring-mars-samples-home