Japan Phobos Mission: World-First Martian Moon Sample Return
The japan phobos mission lifting off Monday is a world first: no spacecraft has ever brought material home from one of Mars’s moons. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) probe is set to launch aboard an H3 rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center at 04:41 Japan time on Tuesday, October 20 — 15:41 EDT on Monday, October 19 — opening a five-year journey to Phobos, the larger of Mars’s two small moons, and back.
The Mission Profile
MMX will enter orbit around Mars in August 2027 and begin circling Phobos the following month, spending years surveying the 22-kilometer-wide moon before deploying a small rover, Idefix, to its surface. The spacecraft will then touch down and collect at least 10 grams of soil and small pebbles from two different sites — the first samples ever taken from Phobos. On the return leg, beginning in November 2030, the probe will fly past Mars’s smaller moon Deimos and turn its instruments on Mars itself before a sample capsule descends to Earth in 2031, landing in Australia’s Woomera Prohibited Area.
Why Phobos Matters
Scientists have two rival theories for how Mars got its moons: the small, irregular bodies could be captured asteroids, or debris thrown into orbit by a colossal ancient impact. Phobos’s chemical composition could settle the debate — and, researchers hope, shed light on the origins of life in the solar system. JAXA also expects the samples to help answer whether a Martian moon could serve as a base for future crewed missions to the planet. The mission is an international effort, with NASA, France’s CNES, Germany’s DLR and the European Space Agency contributing equipment and support.
A Road Others Could Not Travel
Russia tried to reach Phobos in 2011 with its Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which launched successfully but failed to leave Earth orbit. JAXA officials call Mars’s moons the most important “unclimbed mountains in the solar system” — worlds that have never been fully investigated despite dozens of missions to Mars itself.
Source: The Guardian