Short thread by a historian of space exploration, @dsfpspacefl1ght.bsky.social, on the idea of returning samples from Mars as it’s changed over the years.
In the mid-1970s Mars mission planners assumed that a Mars Sample Return mission would return perhaps 200 grams of fines and pebbles collected within a few meters of the lander. A decade later they assumed a massive mission with a rover capable of collecting kilograms across tens of kilometers. 1/
