Claiming that “they retconned the story after weird lightsabers showed up!” isn’t a coherent argument.
…because it wasn’t retconned. I knew of the sample tubes and that they would be deposited long before I saw photos of it - because it was public knowledge. Now, whether you think it’s fake isn’t the premise of this sub-argument, but claiming that it was a retcon isn’t in line with the facts.
Even assuming FE is correct and they faked the mission data, the rover is fake and space is fake, at least be honest that the sample tubes were already part of their story. Photos showing what the sample tubes look like predate the Perseverance mission photos.
This is a spectacular leap of logic. I'm actually impressed. You've compared two dates: the date on which (allegedly - but let's accept it for the sake of the argument) the lightsaber's existence was explained, and the date on which photographs of the lightsaber on Mars became publicly available. You then concluded that, since the explanation was available before the photos became public, it is impossible for it to have been a retcon. This logic is
painfully flawed, and I encourage you, the reader, to pause for a few seconds and think about the flaws you can find in it. I'll focus on my favourite one in the next paragraph.
Now, I don't mean to poke further at your lack of technical prowess - you already explained that you're not familiar with these things, but we can still engage the subject logically. Whenever a process is designed (it doesn't have to be software), it's usually tested. This happens, ideally, long before the process is rolled out into widespread use. The sole purpose of that approach is to address issues before they become significant. In short: it's not only possible, but in fact very likely, that someone would have spotted the lightsabers long before anyone in the public was able to look at them. This doesn't even require a widespread conspiracy - it merely requires the assumption that the people we're dealing it don't frequently forget how to breathe.