This is it. Our May fundraiser is ending on Friday and it's your last chance to help us reach our goal this month.

Revenue sources for newsrooms like ours are changing and donations from you our marketplace

community of listeners are more important than ever. Help us reach our May

goal before Memorial Day weekend and fund public service journalism for all. Give now at marketplace

dot org slash give tech. Help wanted on Mars.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Dromale. Ever since NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars three years ago, it's been collecting rocks and soil from the red planet.

The plan was for NASA to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars to bring those samples back, but

NASA has now scrapped those plans

due to a ballooning price tag and extensive delays.

Here's NASA Administrator Bill Nelson

at a press conference in April.

The bottom line is that $11 billion is too expensive and not returning samples until

2040 is unacceptably too long.

With no way of getting to Mars on its own,

NASA is hoping to hitch a ride with private space companies

to finish the mission.

Think Elon Musk's SpaceX and Blue Origin founded by Jeff

Bezos. New York Times reporter Kenneth Chang covers the space industry. I asked him

how we got here. This is probably the biggest, most ambitious robotic mission

that anyone has ever tried, because pretty much by definition

you have to land on Mars, pick up the rocks, and then launch from Mars.

...