NASA’s plan to bring samples from Mars to Earth has been put on hold until a faster and cheaper way is found, the space agency said Monday. Repairing Martian soil and rocks has been on NASA’s to-do list for decades, but the date was pushed back as costs rose. A recent independent review found the total cost to be between $8 billion and $11 billion, with an arrival date of 2040, nearly a decade later than announced.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said it was too late. It is asking private industry and space agency centers to find other options to develop the project. While NASA faces across-the-board budget cuts, it wants to avoid gutting other science projects to fund the Mars Samples Project.

“We want to take every new, fresh idea we can find,” he said at a press conference.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has collected 24 core samples in tubes since landing in 2021 at the Martian crater Jezero, an ancient river delta. The goal is to collect more than 30 samples to search for possible signs of life on Mars.

The space agency wants to bring at least some of the collected samples to Earth in the 2030s for no more than $7 billion. This would require a spacecraft to travel to Mars to retrieve the tubes and launch them to the planet. It then needs to rendezvous with another spacecraft that will deliver the samples to Earth.

Nicky Fox, NASA’s science mission manager, declined at a press conference to speculate about when the samples would reach Earth or even how many samples could be sent back, given the new schedule and schedule. According to him, this information will be included in any proposal.

“We have never launched from another planet, and that is why returning Mars samples is such a challenging and exciting mission,” Fox said.

Scientists aim to analyze pristine samples from Mars in their own laboratories, going far beyond the basic tests carried out by spacecraft on the Red Planet. Testing at that depth is needed to confirm any evidence of microscopic life from billions of years ago, when water flowed on the planet, according to NASA.

Nelson said the samples will help NASA decide where astronauts will go on Mars in the 2040s.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was responsible for the sample design. There were hundreds of layoffs earlier this year due to budget cuts. Nelson is seeking input from across the space agency to make the revamped program more widespread. NASA hopes to have any insight by late fall.