While I don't take what Musk says very seriously he's talking about sending a Starship rocket with a robot on to Mars next year. Maybe something like that could be combined with the return mission? https://www.foxnews.com/tech/spacex-send-starship-mars-next-...
>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. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-nasa-eyes-spacex-blue-mars.htm...
The writing has been on the wall for the MSR mission for quite some time. As disappointing as this is, I don't think it's fair to blame this all on the Trump admin.
Anecdotal, but I am in the supply chain for this mission, and there have been pauses in work over the last few years with a general sense that the mission might ultimately get cancelled.
