Japan launches mission to return samples from Mars moon
The mission aims to collect at least 10 grams of Phobos material and return it to Earth in 2031 for analysis.
- On Tuesday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched its flagship H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center carrying the Martian Moons Exploration probe, starting a five-year mission to retrieve samples from Phobos.
- The $US578 million, 5-ton spacecraft aims to retrieve material that could reveal the solar system's origins, an unprecedented challenge as no agency has ever successfully landed on or fetched samples from the Martian moons.
- JAXA will deploy a French-German rover named Idefix to the 22-kilometer-wide Phobos. The rover serves as a "scout for safety," French Space Agency official Julien Baroukh said, prowling the surface for 100 days.
- Flight controllers plan to land the four-legged mothership on Phobos in late 2028 or 2029 to drill and vacuum up at least 10 grams of material before launching back to Earth.
- After studying the twin moon Deimos, the probe will return to the Australian desert in 2031. NASA astrophysicist Tom Statler said, "There's a lot of adrenaline," underscoring the mission's complexity and scientific stakes.
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From the Japanese space station Tanegashima an H3 launcher is launched into space. The target is the Mars moon Phobos, which has hardly been researched so far.
Late in the evening of Moscow time, on 19 October, the scientific apparatus of the Japan Space Agency JAX, Martian Mons eXploration (MMX), which was developed by the Japanese Space Agency, went to Mars to investigate the satellites of the Red Planet, Fobos and Deimos, and to deliver one of them with a soil sample. The mission is important for the entire world. Scientists have never held the soil from the Mars orbit, and in the samples of Fobos t…
Japan Launches Spacecraft to Mysterious Moons of Mars in a Bold Mission to Bring Home Soil Samples (Vid)
A Japanese spacecraft rocketed toward Mars on Tuesday on a quest to explore its mysterious moons and bring back samples. Five of the world’s space agencies joined forces for the five-year mission that will attempt to land a robotic prospector plus a rover on Phobos, the larger and closer of Mars’ two pint-sized moons. The...
Japan's Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced today the successful launch of a probe on a mission to collect samples, including rocks and sand, from a Mars moon, on the first such global mission.
Japanese scientists launched on Tuesday a spaceship that aspires to be the first to collect samples from one of the moons of Mars, which could help uncover the origins of the solar system and life on Earth. The H3 flagship rocket, which carries the unmanned Martian Moons eXploration probe, took off from the Tanegashima Space Center, according to a live transmission broadcast by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). If the operation is s…
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