Japan's MMX Mission: A Journey to Mars' Moon Phobos
BBC News - Home
A spacecraft has launched from Japan headed for Mars' moon Phobos, with the ambitious goal of retrieving a sample of moon dust and returning it to Earth for analysis.
If successful, this will mark the first time a sample has been collected from Mars or its moons and brought back to Earth for scientific study. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Phobos in August 2027.
Mars Moons Exploration (MMX) mission is led by the Japanese Space Agency and aims to unravel the mystery of how Mars' moons formed.
Prof. Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum, the MMX mission's deputy for sample analysis, expresses her excitement: "There hasn't yet been a successful mission to go to Phobos and bring a bit back to Earth. I think this is an incredibly ambitious and fun mission."
Phobos and Deimos, Mars' two moons, are tiny, with Phobos approximately 20km (12 miles) across and Deimos around 10km (6 miles) across. They are irregularly shaped, resembling "space potatoes."
The MMX spacecraft will first study Deimos upon its arrival in the Mars neighborhood, and then focus on Phobos. It will deploy a rover to explore the terrain, a challenging task due to the moon's low gravity, influenced by its proximity to the massive Mars.
The rover will identify a suitable landing site for the main spacecraft, which will then touch down on Phobos and use its robotic arm to collect moon dust samples. The samples will be stored in a small capsule and returned to Earth in 2031, landing in the Woomera desert of Australia.
Only 10g of moon dust will be collected, but as Dr. Chrysa Avdellidou from Leicester University points out, "even on individual grains, you can do science."
The returned sample is expected to provide crucial insights into the origin of Mars' moons, narrowing down between two competing theories: either Phobos and Deimos were formed from debris after a space rock hit Mars early in its history or they are captured asteroids from the outer Solar System.