Japanese Mission to Martian Moons Is a Go

Artist impression of the MMX spacecraft (via JAXA)

Japan’s aerospace agency was given the green light to move forward with its Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) mission.

Scheduled to launch in 2024, the spacecraft will visit the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos.

Discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall, the pair were named after Greek gods and twin brothers who personify fear and terror, respectively.

The innermost and larger of the planet’s natural satellites, Phobos orbits so close to Mars that it appears to rise in the west, move across the sky in 4.25 hours or less, then set in the east—twice each Martian day.

If successful, JAXA’s MMX spacecraft will land on Phobos for several hours, collect a sample, then return to Earth, completing the first round trip to the Martian system.

The possibly habitable Red Planet is at the top of everyone’s to-explore list. To understand its evolution and development, we need to also understand its moons.

“Phobos and Deimos resemble asteroids and may have been captured by Mars’s gravity as they were scattered inwards from the asteroid belt,” according to a JAXA press release. “If so, the pair would be capsules for water transport through the Mars gateway to the terrestrial planets.

“Alternatively, the moons may have formed during a giant impact with Mars,” the agency continued. “This would make the moons capsules of shards of the early Martian environment, revealing how water came and went on the Red Planet.”

The MMX mission is the next step in JAXA’s small-body exploration and sample return, which began in 2010 with Hayabusa’s trip to asteroid Itokawa.

In June 2018, Hayabusa2 rendezvoused with near-Earth asteroid Ryugu to survey and sample the orb. It departed in November and is expected to return home later this year.

Technology used in these missions will be further developed for MMX.

More on Geek.com:

• Japan’s Hayabusa-2 Probe Packs Up Space Rock Cargo from Asteroid Ryugu
• JAXA Prepares to Launch Cargo Ship to Space Station
• NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures Two Solar Eclipses on Mars

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