Bringing materials from Mars back to Earth has long been an ambition of space scientists.
The Nasa Perseverance rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2021, has been fastidiously amassing samples on Mars and storing them in canisters.
But a second Nasa/ESA mission, called Mars Sample Return, that would have picked up and returned these canisters, has been successfully cancelled, after its funding was halted by the US Congress.
China is planning its own sampling mission to Mars, set to launch in 2028. It will attempt to return Martian materials to Earth in 2031.
We do already have some fragments of the Red Planet here on Earth in the kind of Martian meteorites.
These are items of Mars that were blasted off the floor by asteroid strikes, and ended up being hurled towards the Earth.
Martian meteorites are extraordinarily uncommon, but like all space rocks that fall to our planet, they become contaminated as soon as they get here, mixing with the air, mud, soil and water.
Scientists are so determined to get their gloved arms on a direct pattern from Mars and its moons because it would be pristine.
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