It Was fall in the Utah desert, and NASA scientist Lindsay Hays was watching the sky. A fat flying saucer soon touched down — a capsule containing bits of an asteroid, which NASA had collected and then shot back home. The capsule’s parachute deployed, slowing its descent toward Earth.
While Hays, deputy program scientist for NASA’s astrobiology program, watched it land, she thought of a different mission — her mission, called Mars Sample Return, or MSR, set to launch later this decade. MSR is an audacious plan to collect samples of material from the red planet and send them on a one-way trip to Earth.
