NASA is asking for help to retrieve Mars samples that could be the first evidence of alien life

The $2.4 billion mission landed the rover in Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake. It's the ideal spot to search for the fossils of Martian microbes that may have existed when the planet was lush with lakes and rivers.

Perseverance's main mission is to collect samples of the rock and sediment along the lake bed and the crater rim, in hopes of finding a sign that life once thrived on the red planet. The rover has done a fine job — so far it's secured 24 samples — but NASA no longer knows how it's going to bring them to Earth for analysis.

NASA's original design for the retrieval mission, called Mars Sample Return, has fallen apart. The agency is asking companies to step in and propose better ideas.

"We are looking at out-of-the-box possibilities that could return the samples earlier and at a lower cost," Nicola Fox, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a press briefing on Monday. "This is definitely a very ambitious goal. We're going to need to go after some very innovative new possibilities for design, and certainly leave no stone unturned."

NASA's original proposal for the Mars Sample Return is "mind-bendingly complicated," David Parker, director of space exploration at the European Space Agency, said in 2021.

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