A spacecraft from Japan was launched towards Mars on Tuesday for a unique mission to investigate its enigmatic moons and retrieve samples. This ambitious endeavor involves a collaboration of five global space agencies aiming to land a robotic explorer and a rover on Phobos, the larger of Mars’s two small moons.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spearheaded the mission, successfully launching the spacecraft from Tanegashima Island’s main spaceport. This significant achievement was celebrated by officials and flight controllers as the spacecraft separated as planned from the rocket’s upper stage.
While NASA has a history of successful Mars landings and China achieved a touchdown in 2021, no previous mission has explored Phobos or its companion moon, Deimos, nor has any mission collected samples from Mars or its moons. If the mission succeeds, samples of dust, soil, and rocks from Phobos are expected to return to Earth in 2031.
Phobos, a small, irregularly shaped rock around 22 kilometers in diameter, holds clues to the origin of Mars’s moons and possibly moons elsewhere in the solar system. Dubbed MMX (Martian Moons Exploration), the mission, with an estimated cost of $812 million, involves a large spacecraft that will reach Mars by late summer. It will rendezvous with Phobos and deploy a French-German rover named Idefix.
The rover, the size of a microwave oven, will autonomously land on Phobos, maneuvering carefully due to the moon’s extremely low gravity. Idefix will operate for 100 days, scouting the terrain to ensure a safe landing area for the mothership, which will collect samples in late 2028 or 2029 before departing for Earth in 2030.
The mission aims to unravel the mysteries of how Mars’s moons formed, shedding light on their origin and potentially revealing insights into planetary formation and the potential for life. This groundbreaking endeavor is expected to influence future Mars missions and could provide valuable scientific insights from the Martian system’s rocks and soil.
Japan’s substantial investment of $350 million in the mission, along with contributions from NASA, the French Space Agency, the German Space Agency, and the European Space Agency, highlights the collaborative effort to unlock the scientific treasures hidden within the Martian system.