NASA announced Tuesday it may turn to Elon Musk's SpaceX or Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin to help reduce the soaring costs of returning Martian rocks collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth.

Previously, the Mars Sample Return mission had been estimated to cost around 11 billion dollars and would not return a sample until the 2040's, noted Nelson, who said a re-evaluation of the mission had to be done because "this thing had gotten out of control."

NASA is pitching a cheaper and quicker way of getting rocks and soil back from Mars. Administrator Bill Nelson presented two options on Tuesday, less than two weeks before stepping down as NASA's chief.

NASA hopes a revised plan will get Mars samples back to Earth faster and cost less than the agency's original plan.

NASA announced Tuesday it had narrowed down to two options the reworked Mars Sample Return mission aiming for a cheaper and quicker completion than the version that was killed last year. One would be to use a version of the sky crane system that was used to land both the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity safely on the Martian surface.

To maximize chances of successfully bringing the first Martian rock and sediment samples to Earth for the benefit of humanity, NASA announced Tuesday a new approach to its Mars Sample Return Program.