Perseverance has collected rock samples on Mars. Will they ever come home?

As of October 2026, there is no funded mission to bring them home. The joint NASA and ESA Mars Sample Return plan was approved in 2022, but in January 2026 a spending bill approved by the U.S. Congress left it out: lawmakers wrote that the deal "does not support the existing Mars Sample Return (MSR) program", and Live Science reported that NASA's plans were effectively cancelled. Accounts of its exact status differ, though: Holistic News noted that same month that the program had not been formally cancelled, even if many experts saw it as finished in its current form. Perseverance has collected 29 rock and regolith samples, so for now they wait on Mars.

Why bring rocks home at all? Sample return would allow more extensive analysis than onboard sensors can, focused on whether Mars once hosted life. A rover carries only a small lab. Earth has far bigger ones. That was the idea behind the mission: Perseverance would collect samples in 43 cylindrical tubes, and later missions would retrieve them.

The reasons were cost and complexity. NASA paused the project in November 2023 after a review critical of its cost and complexity. In April 2024 it reported that the projected $7 billion cost and 2033 return had grown to an unacceptable $11 billion and a return in 2040.

Meanwhile the rover itself is a star. On 11 October 2026 Perseverance passed Opportunity's off-world driving record, reaching 45.22 kilometres on its odometer in five and a half years, a distance that took Opportunity almost 15. Its self-driving system handled more than 90% of that distance.