The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have signed a statement of intent to jointly explore various options related to a potential Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission in the next decade. Returning Martian samples to Earth has long been a goal for the world’s spaceflight agencies, with new promotional materials from NASA indicating that the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew vehicle might have a role to play in such a mission – even though Mars Sample Return has not been discussed by NASA in terms of SLS and Orion in several years.
