David Southwood, former director of the Science and Exploration Directorate at the European Space Agency, urged NASA's leadership not to rush into postponing the Mars sample return mission. According to the journal Science, Southwood indicated that the European Space Agency and NASA had planned a joint project to bring back samples of Mars rocks collected by Perseverance.
Southwood stated, "NASA colleagues are now faced with a difficult choice; on one hand, they can significantly simplify the mission by quickly collecting dust samples from Mars and returning them to Earth for the first time in history, but this does not align with the desires of scientists. On the other hand, they must look for ways to allocate a substantial amount of money for the entire mission, which will be challenging without impacting NASA's other projects given their current budgets and the prevailing mood in the U.S. Congress."
He emphasized that NASA representatives should not rush to reframe the MSR mission and should engage in dialogue with the global scientific community to obtain a comprehensive assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of both scenarios, as such discussions would assist NASA management in determining the best approach to correct the mission while considering its scientific objectives and the issue of leadership in the space race.
