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Marco Polo was a proposed space mission concept studied between 2005 and 2015 that would return a sample of material to Earth from the surface of a Near Earth asteroid (NEA) for detailed study in laboratories.[1] It was first proposed to the European Space Agency in collaboration with the Japan aerospace exploration agency JAXA.[1] The concept was rejected four times between 2007 and 2015 for the Cosmic Vision programme "M" medium-class missions.[2]