NASA's plans for Mars sample return are effectively cancelled as part of a bill approved by the U.S. Congress, ending efforts to collect Perseverance rover samples that could contain evidence of alien life.

On Monday, Congress made good on those promises, releasing a $24.4 billion budget plan for NASA as part of the conferencing process, when House and Senate lawmakers convene to hammer out a final budget. The result is a budget that calls for just a 1 percent cut in NASA’s science funding, to $7.25 billion, for fiscal year 2026.

MAVEN has remained silent since Dec. 6 despite repeated attempts to contact it, according to NASA. As part of the recovery effort, the Curiosity rover attempted twice to image MAVEN when it was expected to pass overhead, "but MAVEN was not detected," the agency said in its most recent update, issued Dec. 23.

New photos show off NASA's newly constructed Roman Space Telescope, which will soon help researchers unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. Experts have also revealed when the next-gen spacecraft is set to launch and begin collecting data.

NASA refers to the Moon as a 4.5-billion-year-old time capsule. The Artemis program will help lead the nation back to vigorous Moon exploration and staging. NASA said, “We are exploring the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars.”

Congress just approved a $24.4 billion budget for NASA for this year, rejecting the deep cuts that President Trump had proposed last spring.

The Senate voted to provide billions more to NASA, NOAA and the National Science Foundation than the president had asked for.

The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to approve billions of dollars in funding for federal science agencies, rejecting deep cuts proposed by President Donald Trump in space and other areas.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced a renewed commitment to developing a nuclear fission power system for use on the Moon, a move aimed at supporting long-term lunar exploration under the Artemis program and future missions to Mars.

A Congressional bill restores funding for most NASA space science missions, but there is no money for returning samples already collected on the red planet.

The U.S. space agency and the Department of Energy will work together to build a fission reactor on the lunar surface in the next four years

During their 167-day mission, the four crew members traveled nearly 71 million miles and completed more than 2,670 orbits around Earth.