This article only obliquely mentions in the last paragraphs, but there's a parallel Chinese program that recently brought back samples from the moon, and will attempt Mars sample return, launching in 2028,
Also also, if China were to create a new mission to collect them, they would see their costs balloon to unsustainable levels as well, as the issue is how the mission is designed. The samples are all over the place and would need a rover specifically designed to collect them and return them to a launcher.
The US Mars sample return project was always half baked in the hopes that doing something would garner funding for the rest of the mission.
That alone is a separate multibillion dollar program just to do that.
Sounds like they blew it. What a shame.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/23/world/asia/23...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-c...
> A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth. Such objects or component parts found beyond the limits of the State Party to the Treaty on whose registry they are carried shall be returned to that State Party, which shall, upon request, furnish identifying data prior to their return.
It is clear, then, that the sample containers are still the property of the US, and that if the Chinese brought them back to Earth, they would be required to give them to the US.
[1] https://www.unoosa.org/unoosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/o...
Not only are political officers making science decisions, but nasa lost its way in the depths of over engineered missions due to requiring a senator to be bribed by the quantity of home stage work.
If it doesn't happen then its of worse quality.
No need to. Mars delivers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/arts/who-owns-this-chunk-...
The website wasn't available anymore
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1hpiuem/the_officia...
The Chang’e missions plan for this in 2030 and they have hit every target to date. While the US is currently targeting 2028, it isn't inconceivable that it can slip by two years.
We are not in a hurry now, because we already won that race many decades ago!
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
President Donald J. TRUMP"
President Donald J Trump
https://thegoodshirts.com/products/hello-i-am-fleeing-the-am...
China also does this. We just don't hear about it because they also quash the reporting.
I am sure this is nothing to be concerned about whatsoever.
Unfortunately all across the West we see a new desire for fascism over individualism and liberty.
They absolutely enforce ideological positions in opposition to science, and very aggressively so.
There is no waffle room on this.
> she had reported security flaws in Tencent’s Sogou keyboard drivers to Western and transnational media.
ok, you got me, if by "science" you mean something completely different than academic research.
I can understand why westerners are uncomfortable with this. I can't find it in myself to care.
The suppression I'm talking about is the CCP rejecting that gay people exist in fact, and censoring anyone that dares to be too visibly gay.
These are smart people, they’re not going to make major life decisions based on simplistic takes from political opportunists.
As we dismantle those components via xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, funding cuts, and so on, trends will change. Already I see a substantial uptick in my PhD/Academic friends moving to Europe as we cede our historic advantages.
If, in say 15 years, China provides better schools, or better economic returns, or (perhaps unlikely) better independence, or all 3, then scientists will go there.
A reserve currency is just a currency that central banks and other important institutions hold in "reserve". The Euro is a reserve currency, as is the Yen, Pound, and others. The American dollar is the primary one, and that usage will ebb and flow over time, but it's arguable that no longer being the primary one is a good thing as it will make American exports more competitive among other things. I don't think I agree but folks have very reasonable and competing takes on this.
The world also isn't going to adopt a Chinese currency as a reserve currency either because China would have to make liberalizing economic reforms which would run counter to the control that the CCP has over the country (why people keep forgetting that China is run by an authoritarian group is beyond me but whatever) and so they won't make those reforms and the world just won't adopt that currency.
More business in China though, tricky to prioritize since I'm doing any of this for the abundance of intimacy and the slavic people come with that, for me. I need to learn Mandarin and Russian.
at least Cantonese is no longer seriously a contender in my sphere. That was distracting
Chinese speak English. I mean, you only need to watch youtube videos here.
It’s fine to talk about a “race” if jingoism is the thing that gets most people on board with funding Nasa. But we ought to know better.
They are co-occurring facts in the same area and the only reason China’s success is relevant in this discussion is because it is co-occurring with and in the same field as the American decline that is (unlike the tangential Chinese angle) directly relevant to the story here.
So, in this specific case, if we are going to mention China at all, the answer is yes. Not because the two things are so linked that they ALWAYS need to be discussed together, but because that is the relevant nexus between the present subject and China at all.
The NASA/ESA Mars sample return was poorly designed, they basically attached a half baked idea to the Perseverance mission in the hopes that having the mission “underway” would make it easier to fund the rest of the mission. That meant Perseverance was just putting things in tubes and leaving them sealed on the ground at random places around Mars. So that meant they would need to devise another system to go collect them, another system to store and launch them, and another system to return them to Earth. That’s a ridiculous process. The costs exploded, the gambit failed.
China’s was much better planned, having the rover and launch vehicle land together, fully funded from the beginning. However, it’s also much simpler, there’s no picking and choosing what to sample from a wide area, it’s just whatever is available to the lander wherever it happens to land.
And this would not have been the only future mission to deep space. The US is going to land a fleet of drones on Mars. They’re launching a nuclear powered drone to Titan.
The US has led the world in reusable rocket development, satellite constellations, and crewed LEO operations.
The big picture is clear. This one mission doesn’t really say much about the space program in general.
That alone is a separate multibillion dollar program just to do that.
And ironically the US very much considers itself to be in a race with China including in space, it's just run by such thundering morons that most of the moves they make advance China's interests more than theirs. Now the cancellation of Mars Sample Return isn't that big an issue in terms of strategic benefit or decline narratives, nor is it a particularly massive surprise (the program's issues are longer term than just current administration cuts). But there is a certain irony in some of the people most interested in scorekeeping with China (and for that matter Mars!) being the ones likely to ensure China pulls off the sample return first.
When your enemy is making a mistake don't interrupt them and all that jazz.
The Chinese rise is also remarkable in its own terms, but it's not the subject of discussion here. The subject here is how the US is under cutting its former preeminence in science.
People took issue with the cost of space exploration in context of "the good the money could do here on Earth", but then when we shifted resources that way, the money did absolutely no good here on Earth.
Maybe it’s better this way. There is a tendency of every organization, private or public, to rot and stagnate over time. But in the private sectors they die more quickly and give way to new entrants, which would help space exploration long term.
The collapse of the USSR was the worst thing to happen to NASA.
I would suggest a watch of "We Stopped Dreaming" https://youtu.be/CbIZU8cQWXc
A less angry version (video and transcript of Neil DeGrasse Tyson testifying before the Senate's Science Committee on 7 March 2012) https://ifsa.my/articles/we-stopped-dreaming-by-neil-degrass...
Let’s be honest with one anther. We went to the Moon because we were at war with the Soviet Union. To think otherwise is delusion, leading some to suppose the only reason we’re not on Mars already is the absence of visionary leaders, or of political will, or of money. No. When you perceive your security to be at risk, money flows like rivers to protect us.
But there exists another driver of great ambitions, almost as potent as war. That’s the promise of wealth. Fully funded missions to Mars and beyond, commanded by astronauts who, today, are in middle school, would reboot America’s capacity to innovate as no other force in society can. What matters here are not spin-offs (although I could list a few: Accurate affordable Lasik surgery, Scratch resistant lenses, Cordless power tools, Tempurfoam, Cochlear implants, the drive to miniaturize of electronics…) but cultural shifts in how the electorate views the role of science and technology in our daily lives.
As the 1970s drew to a close, we stopped advancing a space frontier. The “tomorrow” articles faded. And we spent the next several decades coasting on the innovations conceived by earlier dreamers. They knew that seemingly impossible things were possible—the older among them had enabled, and the younger among them had witnessed the Apollo voyages to the Moon—the greatest adventure there ever was. If all you do is coast, eventually you slow down, while others catch up and pass you by.The Space Race was a unique and limited phase coming out of the atomic age when public support for scientific research was at an all time high. With the Kennedy and Johnson administrations willing to fund programs left and right to improve education and research with long term aims. The Soviets were also at the apogee of their scientific capability, and Khrushchev did great PR for all their achievements which unnerved Americans and provided the Cold War justification for new domestic programs.
Once the Brezhnev age of stagnation and lopsided USSR military spending set in, the new Cold War 2.0 became about numbers of delivery vehicles and NATO conventional deterrence, not space and science. By then the US had clear technological dominance that seemed insurmountable in the new world of microchips and computers in which the Soviets couldn't compete. Which allowed Reagan to boost military budgets and deficit spending while simultaneously beginning the Republican "starve the beast" strategy to cut taxes and non-military domestic programs.
All of this is to point out that Cold War = Space Race/Apollo is looking back with rose colored glasses. We could just as easily see federal space and science spending getting further slashed every year while churning out warheads, delivery vehicles and conventional arms ever faster (and seems more likely based on late Cold War trends).
It clearly was, at least in several examples. It looks like he's getting it right from NASA:
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1996/43.html
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff2003/hm_3.html
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/node/9275
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Telescope-Mirror-Tech-Improves-Eye-...
So things like curing AIDS don't count?
What view do you have on the trajectory of the U.S.? Is America ascending or declining?
The success China is having isn’t something that’s occurring in isolation. There is a void and they are filling it.
What view do you have of what programs have been cut from Chinese government budgets? Can you link to some of the HN discussions around them so I can also see people commenting on the internal policy decisions that the Chinese government has made available for people to openly comment on?
America was a bulwark against Chinese expansion, and that ended a while back, maybe with WTO entry?
International relations under this regime is a new poison, and is aiding some awful regimes.
Former Soviet people might...
They were the first to orbit, after all.
The moon landing was fine and all, a moment of global historic import (and propaganda value, with the US putting their flag on it like they owned the damned thing) but that's still just one victory in a race that was otherwise entirely dominated by the Soviets, and on balance what the Soviets did was of greater scientific merit than anything the US would achieve for years. Americans didn't even care about space until Russia flew Sputnik over their heads.
Space? That was excellent marketing.
Boomers and Silents (and, to a lesser and understandable extent re: Challenger, Gen X) should be ashamed, though.
I get harangued every time I point the finger, but for Pete's sake, Millennials didn't do this. Millennials wanted to go to Space Camp. It has to be SOMEONE'S fault. SOMEONE take responsibility.
And kicking people off of twitter and facebook for similar banned thoughts?
> NASA needs to rethink its goal of returning samples from the Martian surface to Earth, the agency’s administrator Bill Nelson said in a press call on Monday.
Steady as she goes, Mr. Sulu.
Stop rubber stamping stupidity like RFK, pass a war powers resolution, and reign in the vengeance based tariffs.
Download the CSV and search for things like "Latinx" or "Black" or "equity" or "URM" (URM = non-white)
>CHS: Large: Collaborative Research: Gender-Inclusive Open Source through Gender-Inclusive Tools
>This work will harness foundational gender research to provide theory-based yet practical solutions, towards addressing the underrepresentation of women in OSS communities.
>The AGEP Florida Alliance Model: Improving Minority Women Success in STEM Faculty Careers
>The research team is also investigating ways that URM women in STEM build skills, knowledge and competencies to successfully enter and persist in faculty careers.
>STEM Leadership, Equity, and Advancement for Faculty
>The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers
Most of these are pure racism and absolutely deserved to be revoked.
Yeah classic woke stuff that
> TRTech-PGR: NSF BSF - Recombining Allelic Diversity via Genome Editing for Dissecting Complex Plant Traits
This would be funny if it wasn't happening in real life. Clearly they did "ctrl-f diversity" and didn't actually read what they were cancelling.
I think the Trump admin decided since it will not make them a profit, like other scientific research already canceled, it is not worth doing.