The mystery of how life on Earth originated, and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe, are "the raison d’être of space exploration", said Louis Friedman, co-founder of the Planetary Society.
The answer, he wrote in The Washington Post, "might be in one of the test tubes now sitting on Mars". But the samples, collected by Nasa's Perseverance rover, "seem doomed to endlessly wait for no answer" – because Donald Trump is cancelling the mission to bring them home.
Since Perseverance touched down on the Red Planet in February 2021, the "car-sized, nuclear-powered robot" has been gathering samples for delivery to Earth, where "close-up inspection" might provide "the first compelling evidence of life beyond Earth", said Scientific American.
Unless, that is, "the Trump administration gets its way". The US president's recent "budgetary bombshell" proposed to cut Nasa's funding by a quarter and "entirely eliminate the Mars Sample Return programme", which the White House claimed was "grossly over-budget". The samples, it said, would be collected by "human missions to Mars". That is "nonsense on several levels", said Scott Hubbard, Stanford University scientist and Nasa's inaugural Mars program director. "I know of no credible 'humans to Mars' scenario that is earlier than 2039 or 2040."
The answers to how life began could also "advance" fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, communications, synthetic biology, chemistry, and more. Which is why China and India are pursuing similar missions. "By abandoning return of Mars samples to other nations, the US abandons the preeminent role that JFK ascribed to the scientific exploration of space" in his 1962 Rice University speech, said the 2023 Nasa independent review of the project. | 
