NASA's attempt to bring home part of Mars is unprecedented. The mission's problems are not

Last year was a crisis point for Mars Sample Return, whose goal is to fetch rocks from the Red Planet's Jezero crater and bring them back to Earth for study.

In July, the U.S. Senate presented NASA with an ultimatum in its proposed budget: Either present a plan for completing the mission within the $5.3 billion budgeted, or risk cancellation. A sobering independent review found in September that there was "near zero probability" of Mars Sample Return making its proposed 2028 launch date, and "no credible" way to fulfill the mission within its current budget. NASA is due to respond to that report this month.

The James Webb Space Telescope was further along in its development journey when it reached a similar crossroads in 2010, six years after construction began. Frustrated with the ballooning budget and constantly postponed launch date, the U.S. House of Representatives included no funding for the telescope in its proposed budget, which would have ended the project had the Senate agreed.

In a statement, lawmakers castigated the mission as "billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management," foreshadowing the criticisms that would be leveled at Mars Sample Return more than a decade later.

To forestall cancellation, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) ordered an independent review of the project, which was under construction in her state.

The board determined that Webb's problems stemmed from a "badly flawed" initial budget. All the technical expertise needed to complete this ambitious project was there, the evaluators concluded. But getting it done with the amount of money currently set aside would be virtually impossible.

Illingworth remembered that review when he read the Mars Sample Return assessment, which offered a similarly stark conclusion.

"Some of the words are very familiar," he said with a chuckle.

When the Mikulski review came out in 2010, Illingworth was deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which later became the James Webb Space Telescope.

He was sympathetic to the challenges facing Mars Sample Return managers, though chagrined that the James Webb Space Telescope's hard-earned lessons have apparently faded so quickly — especially the importance of having a realistic budget from the beginning.

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