NASA's Mars Sample Return is dead, leaving China to retrieve signs of life from the Red Planet

A rendering of multiple rovers, drones, sample caches, and spacecraft around the surface of Mars.

NASA's Mars Sample Return program has been effectively cancelled, meaning the best evidence of life on Mars could be trapped in rock samples that NASA no longer has the budget to collect.

On Monday (Jan. 15), the U.S. Senate approved a spending bill that reverses the Trump administration’s decision to halve federal spending on science and slash NASA's budget by nearly a quarter.