According to Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, a Mars sample return mission is often described by the planetary science community as the "holy grail" of robotic space missions, due to its high expected scientific return-on-investment.
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In early 2011, the National Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which laid out mission planning priorities for the period 2013-2022 at the request of NASA and the NSF, declared a MSR campaign its highest priority Flagship Mission for that period.
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A Mars sample return mission (MSR) would be a spaceflight mission to collect rock and dust samples from Mars and to return them to Earth.
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It proposes some new missions, such as a cometary mission, an extended Cassini mission (including three probes; one for the study of the atmosphere of Saturn, one atmospheric Titan probe and one to land on Titan) and a Mars sample return mission.