NASA’s interim administrator Sean Duffy was fired up on Wednesday when he joined a teleconference to talk about new scientific findings that concerned the potential for life to have once existed on Mars.
“This is exciting news,” said Duffy about an arrow-shaped rock on Mars found by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rock contained chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. The findings were intriguing, but not conclusive. Further study of the rocks in an advanced lab on Earth might prove more definitive.
Duffy was ready, he said, to discuss the scientific results along with NASA experts on the call with reporters. However, the very first question—and for any space reporter, the obvious one—concerned NASA’s on-again, off-again plan to return rocks from the surface of Mars for study on Earth. This mission, called Mars Sample Return, has been on hold for nearly two years after an independent analysis found that NASA’s bloated plan would cost at least $8 billion to $11 billion. President Trump has sought to cancel it outright.
Duffy faces the space press
“What’s the latest on NASA’s plans to retrieve the samples from Perseverance?” asked Marcia Dunn, a reporter with the Associated Press, about small vials of rocks collected by the NASA rover on Mars.
“So listen, we’re looking at how we get this sample back, or other samples back,” Duffy replied. “What we’re going to do is look at our budget, so we look at our timing, and you know, how do we spend money better? And you know, what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly? And so that’s a current analysis that’s happening right now.”
A couple of questions later, Ken Chang, a science reporter with The New York Times, asked Duffy why President Trump’s budget request called for the cancellation of Mars Sample Return and whether that was still the president’s intent.
“I want to be really clear,” Duffy replied. “This is a 30-year process that NASA has undertaken. President Trump didn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s forget about Mars.’ No, we’re continuing our exploration. And by the way, we’ve been very clear under this president that we don’t want to just bring samples back from Mars. We want to send our boots to the Moon and to Mars, and that is the work that we’re doing. Amit (Kshatriya, the new Associate Administrator of NASA) even said maybe we’ll send our equipment to test this sample to Mars itself. All options are on the table.”
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