Aug 6, 2026 | Journal
On August 6, 2026, CNSA announced that China will build a dedicated planetary protection laboratory to handle samples returned by its Tianwen-3 Mars mission. The facility is designed to prevent both forward contamination (Earth microbes hitchhiking to Mars) and...
Aug 4, 2026 | Journal
The FY2026 budget locked three days ago, and with it, the Mars Sample Return mission became a dead letter. What strikes me is not the cancellation itself—MSR had been spiraling toward $11 billion with a 2040 timeline, a classic case of institutional complexity...
