NASA is seemingly caught between a Mars rock and a hard place. The space agency’s best-laid plan to robotically retrieve prized samples of the Red Planet for scrutiny back on Earth has been decades in ...

Update: A minibus spending package passed by the House of Representatives on January 8, 2026, effectively cancels the Mars Sample Return program by eliminating almost all funding for future missions.

Michael Rosenston is a fact-checker and researcher with expertise in business, finance, and insurance. Julie Bang / Investopedia A Z-test evaluates the significance of a sample mean's difference from ...