The Mars Sample Return mission has been ranked as the highest priority by planetary scientists, who hope to find signs of ancient life on Mars.

NASA said in its announcement it is changing the plan for the spacecraft that will land on Mars to retrieve the samples and exploring two new, different options. One of the option

NASA announced Tuesday it had narrowed down to two options the reworked Mars Sample Return mission aiming for a cheaper and quicker completion than the version that was killed last year. One would be to use a version of the sky crane system that was used to land both the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity safely on the Martian surface.

Dr. Nick Fox, the director of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told reporters, “We explore Mars as part of our ongoing efforts to safely send humans to explore farther and farther into the solar system while also kind of getting to the bottom of whether Mars once supported ancient life and shed life on the early solar system.”

Previously, the Mars Sample Return mission had been estimated to cost around 11 billion dollars and would not return a sample until the 2040's, noted Nelson, who said a re-evaluation of the mission had to be done because "this thing had gotten out of control."

Anyone hoping for a clear path forward this year for NASA’s imperiled Mars Sample Return mission will have to wait a little longer. The agency has settled on two potential strategies for the first effort to bring rock and soil from another planet back to Earth for study,

NASA has arrived at two ways of returning samples collected on Mars to Earth. Now, the agency will test the options to see if the cache can make it back in the 2030s.