Japan Mars moon mission aims for first round trip

Japan is preparing to launch the Martian Moons eXploration probe on Tuesday, October 20, in a mission that aims to collect the first samples from Mars's moon Phobos and complete the first round trip to the Martian system.

JAXA said the flagship H3 rocket carrying the unmanned MMX spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 4:41 am local time, or 1941 GMT on Monday. The spacecraft is due to arrive near Mars a year later, orbit Phobos for up to three years, land and collect at least 10 grams of surface material.

A rover called IDEFIX is to conduct surface observations before the landing attempt. MMX will also observe Mars's other moon, Deimos, but is not planned to land there before returning to Earth.

Project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu told AFP that sampling from Phobos would be a world first and would make the mission the first round trip to the Martian system. JAXA says the mission could also help establish requirements for future crewed Mars exploration, including the possible use of Phobos as a natural space station.

Scientists hope the samples will help determine whether Mars's moons formed after a giant impact or were asteroids captured by Mars's gravity. Patrick Michel, a French astrophysicist working on the rover, said Phobos and Deimos could hold clues to how water, volatiles and organic compounds were transported to the inner rocky planets.

The mission is a collaboration involving JAXA, France's National Centre for Space Studies, the German Aerospace Center, NASA, the European Space Agency and about 20 universities and technology companies. Japan has previously returned space samples with Hayabusa-2, which brought back 5.4 grams of asteroid rock and dust in 2020, but Kawakatsu said MMX must travel close to Mars and escape the planet's gravity well.