The Perseverance rover will be landing in about a week, and it's big mission is to drive around Jezero crater collecting samples. Then the plan is for two more missions to be launched in 2026 to send a rover, a launcher and a return ship to bring those samples back to Earth.
Meanwhile SpaceX has ambitious plans to send humans to Mars in 2026, and even if they miss that target, it seems like they could at least get an uncrewed Starship to Mars by 2026 or 2028? Which would allow a return trip in 2028 or 2030, and that ship would have plenty of capacity to bring back tons of samples.
Obviously Starship development is still in early stages, and it's tough to predict when it'll be orbital, or capable of getting to Mars. And getting back from Mars is even more difficult. But it seems like worst case, one starship could bring a large enough sample return rocket to get the samples off Mars and headed back towards Earth? Potentially as early as a 2024 landing, but the chances should improve significantly by 2026 or 2028.
Also, what are the chances that NASA and ESA actually have both missions ready to launch in 2026? That seems like a tight schedule considering the pace of past missions and the fact that official plans for the mission haven't been publicly announced yet? And it seems like they're planning to use very efficient, but slow, transfers to get to Mars and back, with samples only getting back to Earth in 2031 according to the current estimates.
Could it be that NASA is intentionally dragging their feet a bit planning this mission, to give SpaceX a chance to prove out Starship, so they could switch to using that for the sample return? Otherwise it seems like there's a chance that NASA could plan a very ambitious and complicated and expensive missions to return some samples, and SpaceX will make the whole thing redundant in the middle of the mission's life by having some people just grab a bunch of rocks and bring them back when they come home.
I'm designing my Mars sample return craft, and I'm curious of your preferred approach to this challenge. I was thinking of either simple, two stage rocket (one to orbit and one to Earth), or launching a smaller rocket to an orbital rendezvous, using claw to get the sample, and then to head home.
Proposed landing sites for MSR missions appear to target a latitude range of -5 degrees to 25 degrees. Why wouldn't these two values be equal and opposite?
Sources for clarification-
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary_news/2014/04/04/scientists-favor-four-exomars-landing-sites/
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2011-06/P3_GRANT_Landing_Sitesv3.pdf
Page 9: -14.9 degrees stresses southern latitude limit
