Japan Launches Historic First Round-Trip Mission to Mars' Moon Phobos

Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft on an H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center on October 19 (19:41 GMT), sending it on what project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu described as 'the first round trip to the Martian system.' The spacecraft will arrive near Mars around August 2027, spend up to three years orbiting and studying Phobos — the larger of Mars's two moons at roughly 22 km across — before deploying the 25-kg French-built rover Idefix in early 2029 and landing to collect at least 10 grams of surface material in 2030. The samples are due back on Earth in 2031, landing in Australia. Scientists hope the material will settle the debate over whether Phobos formed from a giant impact or was a captured asteroid, shedding light on how habitable conditions arose in the inner Solar System. The mission is JAXA's largest international collaboration in planetary exploration, involving NASA, ESA, France's CNES, Germany's DLR, and approximately 20 universities and technology companies. It competes in a sample-race with China's Tianwen-3 mission, due for launch in 2028.