The NASA/ESA mission was cut, yes. China's Tianwen-3 is reportedly still on track, and Japan launched theirs this week, although that one is going to Phobos (Mars' first moon) instead. Nonetheless, if either mission succeeds, even partially, they leapfrog any Western-led Mars sample return by several years, at least.

Have they figured out how that’ll happen yet?

Short answer: If "they" refers to NASA (and ESA) - no.

Long answer:
China has plans to launch their Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, Tianwen-3, in 2028, though they won't be grabbing these samples from Perseverance, obviously (even the nearest proposed landing site is ~2000 km away). The samples would be returned in 2031.

Now I will gladly accept any samples from a known site on the Martian surface - even contaminated ones. However, we should all remember that the 30 core samples gathered by Perseverance (so far) have been chosen with great care, across 45+ km of roving and years of careful analysis, right there on the Martian ground. Their science value is already known to be off the charts, representing a variety of different environments and time periods in Martian history, and that includes the era where this region hosted the Neretva River watershed and Lake Jezero. This comprehensive slice of Martian history is not something that Tianwen-3 or any single-phase MSR mission will be able to match, I am certain, no matter how skilled (or lucky) the landing site selection may be.

Certain prominent figures in the United States (hint: they're not popular on Lemmy, or in the planetary science community) have hindered plans for a Western-led MSR. They seem to think that we can bypass the robotic sample return phase altogether, and simply launch a human crew to the surface. For reasons I won't get into here, I think it is highly unlikely that a first human landing on Mars would be able to return the sheer variety of high-value samples that Perseverance has gathered - certainly not with the landing sites that have been proposed so far.

I hope this was clear, happy to answer any related questions.

It safeguards the sample for return to Earth. Of course the tube will need to be sealed and delivered to the sample depot first, but at least we've finally managed to secure one, after the previous failed try.

Fuck you and your agism.

I quite appreciate the visceral dislike that people have for Tesla. Given that we see their products directly in our everyday lives, I certainly don't blame people for reacting this way, and I'm happy to encourage this sort of scrutiny, especially over the longer term. I sometimes think, though, that the zeitgeist is missing some of the deeper damage that Musk's enterprises are inflicting. I don't think there's nearly enough journalism about the ongoing effects of DOGE cuts, for example.

And then there's SpaceX. In all the anger over the throttling of Starlink ("Starshield") for the defenders in Ukraine, I haven't seen a single note of awareness about Starlink and LEO satellite megaconstellations being inherently harmful (regardless of who launches them). Aside from the increased orbital collision risk, the atmospheric pollution, and the blinding of astronomical facilities (including asteroid defense), there's the threat to the ozone layer from all that reentering aluminum. All of which will only increase as lunatics continue to use near-orbital space as their dumping ground.

It's a powerful metaphor for our time. When it comes to Tesla, I think there's a good company in there, somewhere. And SpaceX absolutely employs some of the best aerospace talent on the planet, capable of advancing legitimate science and exploration in space. And yet, so many brilliant folk are caught up employing their skills in juvenile displays like flying car stunts and planet-encircling rings of disposable satellites.

I kind of preferred the version without ads (posted earlier today), but I'll comment here to highlight this decent infographic from JPL:

Once upon a time, NASA and JPL would themselves take up the task of adding scale to rover images, by adding in a correctly scaled model of the vehicle to actual photographs:

Now Opportunity compares to a golf cart in size, whereas Curiosity and Perseverance are nearer a car or van. The above image of Opportunity at Victoria Crater, a small break in the immense flatness of Meridiani Planum, would seem modest compared to a scaled model of Curiosity ascending Mt. Sharp. I wish I had the skills and time to do that kind of work...

Oh, no, it was definitely interesting enough. This latest sampling attempt took place a good eight sols after the abrasion, and they were hitting this thing with the X-ray and LIBS (laser) instruments for more than five sols, all of that before they broke out the coring drill. By my count, only one rock at Lac de Charmes got anything quite like this kind of treatment (the Vingeanne target), and the only target in this entire mission that took hits from SuperCam for longer was this conglomerate (sedimentary) rock down on top of the delta, where they did end up sampling.

Yeah, they irradiated this rock like Curiosity taking potshots at cats.

are they abandoning any thought of retrieving it?

Long answer:

I could go on about this entire part of the mission for several posts, but suffice it to say that abandoning this sample is a matter for tears, not shrugs. Trust me on this. The backtracking required by Percy to reach this spot was incredible, possibly unprecedented in planetary exploration (the only comparable example I can recall came at the beginning of Curiosity's mission, but that was a lateral move and not a true backtrack).

The basic problem we have here is that most of these amazing "spotted white" rocks here are too small, and appear to be too rough, for similar coring attempts. Aside from this big one we've already tried, there aren't many solid-looking ones to choose from:

To be honest, I wasn't sure that abrading was going to work well in the first place, as I believed the rock would be pretty hard/tough, but I was pleasantly surprised by how clean and well-defined the abrasion patch was. Between that, and the huge and somewhat unusual number of photos and geochemical measurements they took here, I can assure you that the science team was highly interested in this material, which has never been seen by any rover before, certainly not before this mission.

I cannot emphasize enough how much of a "detour" this sample and the entire visit to this area has been. It was never part of the original plan for exploring this area (we're a fair bit northeast of the "Lac de Charmes" marker at the moment), which involved getting two samples down at Lac de Charmes - and those were supposed to be bedrock samples, not "float" rocks (clasts) like this one. To date, they didn't take a single one! And now, here they are, on this huge detour. I would gladly give up one of our six remaining empty tubes to get a sample here, no regrets, no matter what we find later. Exciting times!

They drove off today, did I miss it or are they abandoning any thought of retrieving it?

Short answer: yes, it appears they have given up on this particular sample. The rock simply didn't cooperate - its hardness is apparently such that it allowed the drill to penetrate, but prevented the detachment of the desired material within the drill! And there it remains within the borehole, intact and still connected to the rock.

most meteorites are primarily iron

I have to note that this is not correct. Chondrites make up the vast majority of meteorites, and even the most iron-rich chondrites contain much less than 50% iron by weight.

I haven't been to Barringer Crater and I don't know all the sweet, gory details of the big bolide that made it, but LPI seems to have a nice summary. The estimated 30 tons of meteoritic iron retrieved from the site certainly isn't very much, and I have heard a variant of Agent641's story before, so I'll refrain on commenting there.

I'm a little sad thinking about all that oxidized iron, though. On Luna that stuff gets reduced instead, so that the regolith is peppered with little spheres of iron. Of course, here, we don't get the little balls of iron, or much in the way of intact craters at all... damn it, we could use a few more.

Sighs Earth. For all the predators and the continent-busting rifts here, this place just isn't very hardcore sometimes.

Denying your opponent the use of space, be it Low Earth Orbit or points beyond in cislunar space, is hardly trivial. You would notice if the GPS, weather and communication functions of Earth's satellite swarm were denied you. China and Russia understand this well, no matter how many people here may be stuck in their blinkered, reactionary opinion that "space is a waste of money".