The current plan is for a launch in 2026 to send a NASA-designed rocket, and a rover and an orbiter designed by ESA, to Mars. The rover will collect Perseveran

The current plan is for a launch in 2026 to send a NASA-designed rocket, and a rover and an orbiter designed by ESA, to Mars. The rover will collect Perseverance's sample tubes and place them in the rocket, which will carry the tubes into Mars orbit. The orbiter will rendezvous, collect the sample tubes, and carry them back to Earth, landing in Utah in 2031. https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/04/20/nasa-narrows-design-for-rocket-to-launch-samples-off-of-mars/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/04/20/nasa-narrows-design-fo... Edit: to your other points, I've thought of some justifications for this architecture: * The sample return mission will have very limited payload capacity, so the samples should be chosen on the basis of potential scientific value, and selected from a large land area. This can probably best be done with a multi-year rover mission equipped with the best scientific instruments and locomotion available. * Perseverance's scientific instruments are useful for studying rocks that won't be sampled, so spending weeks or months ferrying samples to a return vehicle would be a sub-optimal use of its very valuable time. * Mechanically interfacing (to transfer samples) with an orbital solid-fuel rocket is probably somewhat dangerous, so it's best for Perseverance if there's a less-valuable robot to do that. * The return vehicle will probably be limited in where it can land, because it will have to land on ground that is suitable to launch from. It is unlikely to be landed anywhere close to a bunch of interesting rocks and formations. * Science instruments, and the manipulators to use them, are heavy, power-hungry, and fragile. If the sample-collection rover doesn't have any, then it can be better-specialized for the task: faster, less fragile, able to traverse softer or more rugged ground. Traveling many tens of kilometers to collect samples may not be nearly as difficult for it as for any previous, science-burdened rover.