No human has ever held a rock collected from the surface of another planet, but for decades that prize seemed closest for NASA. The Perseverance rover has been sealing Martian rock and soil into titanium tubes since 2021, waiting for a retrieval mission that was supposed to bring them home. In 2026 that plan effectively ended, and the race to return the first Mars samples now belongs to other nations.

The NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return architecture grew steadily more expensive and complex. The original plan needed three missions: Perseverance collecting samples, a retrieval lander with a Mars ascent vehicle and a sample transfer arm, and an Earth return orbiter. Independent reviews criticised the cost and schedule, NASA paused the programme in late 2023, and after a redesign effort aimed at a cheaper profile, the fiscal year 2026 budget process ended the programme of record. Congress confirmed in January 2026 that the existing Mars Sample Return programme would not be funded.

It is worth being precise about what was cancelled. The concept of returning Mars samples is not dead, and funding for Mars future missions and sample-return technologies continued at a reduced level. What ended was the specific multi-mission architecture with its roughly 11-billion-dollar price tag and a return date slipping toward 2040. Advisory groups stressed that sample return was cancelled as currently formulated, not as a scientific goal, leaving the door open to a simpler, cheaper future attempt.

China's Tianwen-3 is now the most likely first mission to return Mars surface samples. The plan uses a dual launch in the late 2028 Mars window, with a lander and ascent vehicle on one rocket and an orbiter and return module on another, targeting a return to Earth around 2031. If it holds that schedule, China would bring home the first Martian surface material, a prestige and experience win that would also give its scientists first access to unaltered Mars samples.

Japan's Martian Moons eXploration mission, known as MMX, took a different and arguably cleverer route. Launched in October 2026 aboard an H3 rocket, MMX will travel to Mars' moons, land on Phobos, and collect at least 10 grams of surface material before returning to Earth in 2031. Phobos may itself carry particles blasted off Mars by ancient impacts, so a Phobos sample could indirectly contain Martian material, and MMX would be the first round trip to the Martian system regardless.

The MMX spacecraft is a substantial machine, roughly five tonnes, carrying a small French-German rover called IDEFIX that will scout the landing site before the main lander touches down. The lander will spend only about two hours on the surface, drilling and vacuuming up its sample, before launching back into space. It will then study Deimos during flybys before departing the Martian neighbourhood in 2030 for its 2031 delivery in the Australian desert.

For scientists, the stakes go beyond national prestige. Mars samples analysed in Earth laboratories, with instruments far larger and more capable than anything a rover can carry, could settle questions about ancient habitability, past water chemistry and the history of the Martian climate that remote instruments can only hint at. Perseverance's cached tubes remain on Mars, scientifically precious and currently without a ride home, which is why the debate over a future retrieval mission continues.

The next few years will decide whether 2031 brings one sample return or two, and whether Perseverance's tubes eventually follow. For now, the story of Mars sample return has shifted east: China and Japan are executing, NASA is regrouping, and the first Mars rock in a laboratory may arrive sooner than the old American schedule ever promised.