Still reeling from the failure of its two most recent missions to Mars, NASA announced late last month that it would delay by nearly a decade plans to bring back samples from the Red Planet. According to the new strategy, the agency may not launch its first sample-return mission until 2014. That means Mars material won’t be delivered to Earth until 2016, 8 years later than the agency had originally proposed (SN: 4/25/98, p.
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