The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) probe is an international effort, constructed with help from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and others. Over the next few years, it will closely study the Red Planet's twin moons, Phobos and Deimos. The spacecraft will snap close-up photos of the pair before attempting to land on the larger satellite, Phobos, to scoop up rocky material that will hopefully be carried back to Earth in around five years.
The MMX probe will study Phobos (bottom center) and Deimos (upper right) up close. [This is a composite image made by stitching together individual photos of Mars (left) and its moons.] (Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
"This mission marks a transformative leap in our capacity to investigate the Martian system," Sonia Fornasier, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory who has studied Phobos and Deimos extensively and is a project scientist for MMX's infrared spectrometer instrument (MIRS), told Live Science. It "ranks very high" among the missions we have sent to the Red Planet so far, she added.
The camper-van-sized spacecraft successfully separated from the rocket's fairing just over an hour later, and on Wednesday (Oct. 21), JAXA announced that the mission had passed the "initial critical operations phase," meaning the probe is now locked into its roughly 140 million-mile-long (225 million kilometers) journey to Mars, which will take around 10 months.
Large crowds gathered at the Tanegashima Space Center to watch the launch of the H3 rocket carrying MMX in the early hours of Monday (Oct. 19). (Image credit: JIJI Press / AFP via Getty Images)
Once the probe arrives at the Red Planet in August 2027, it will insert itself into a "quasi-satellite orbit" around Phobos. In other words, MMX will circle Mars alongside the moon but will not be gravitationally bound to it, similar to around half a dozen "quasi-moons" that currently accompany Earth around the sun.
Sonia Fornasier, Paris Observatory
During the first landing, MMX will hover just above the moon and deploy a mini rover, dubbed Idefix, onto the moon's surface. The wandering robot, built by the French and German space agencies, will have to contend with extremely weak gravity as it trundles across the surface of Phobos: The rover weighs around 55 pounds (25 kilograms) on Earth but will weigh only around half an ounce (15 grams) on Phobos, according to ESA.
The MMX probe will arrive at Mars in August 2027, following a 10-month journey from Earth. (Image credit: JAXA/MMX)Two of the MMX lander's legs contain built-in sampling devices — one that will drill into Phobos and another that will hoover up surface material. The second device, dubbed the Pneumatic Sampler (or P-Sampler), was built by the Blue Origin-owned private company Honeybee Robotics on behalf of NASA and will collect its material in a "matter of seconds," Kris Zacny, vice president of the Exploration Technology Group at Honeybee Robotics, said at an Oct. 15 NASA news conference. "You blink, and it's all done."
The probe will deploy the IDEFIX rover on Phobos before it lands to collect its samples. The wandering robot will provide initial data that will help select a suitable landing site for MMX. (Image credit: DLR)
Once the samples have been acquired, at some point between late 2028 and early 2029, the probe will conduct a series of close flybys of Mars' smaller moon, Deimos, before beginning the long trip back to Earth in late 2030 — the first return flight ever attempted by a spacecraft sent to Mars.
What could we learn about Phobos and Deimos?
Mars' twin satellites, which were first spotted by American astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877, are nothing like Earth's constant companion. For starters, they are much smaller; Phobos is around 14 miles (22 km) across, while Deimos is just 7.5 miles (12 km) wide. The duo also have lopsided shapes and are between 12 and 64 times closer to Mars than the moon is to Earth. (Phobos, meaning "fear," and Deimos, meaning "terror," are named after the sons of the Greek war god Ares, the counterpart to the Roman war god Mars.)
The most notable feature on Phobos is Stickney crater, which is more than 5 miles wide. This photo of the crater was snapped by the HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and was released earlier this month. (Image credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA)
Other Martian spacecraft, such as the Emirates Mars Mission orbiter, have flown close to the moons, and NASA's Mars rovers have frequently looked up to see the satellites eclipsing the sun in Mars' sky (sometimes both at the same time). Yet many mysteries remain about the pair.
MMX will closely analyze Mars' moons using nearly a dozen different sensors and instruments to help pin down the mysterious origin of the twin satellites. (Image credit: JAXA/MMX)
The biggest mystery surrounding Phobos and Deimos is their origin. Some researchers suspect the satellites are asteroids, or maybe even comets, that have been captured by Mars' gravity, while others think the moons emerged from the debris of an ancient impact on the planet's surface, similar to how Earth's moon formed.
EXCLUSIVE TO LIVE SCIENCE PRONeither theory is conclusive, meaning the moons' origins "remain enigmatic," Christopher Edwards, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University and one of NASA's participating scientists for MMX, told Live Science.
"MMX will solve this debate thanks to the spacecraft observations and the detailed analysis of the samples of Phobos on Earth," Fornasier said. The data the probe collects from its flybys of Deimos will also allow researchers to generate a "full characterization of this body," she added.
This photo of Deimos was snapped by the Emirates Moon Mission in 2023 and is one of the best images of either of Mars' moons to date. (Image credit: Emirates Mars Mission)What could we learn about Mars itself?
Regardless of how the twin moons formed, researchers also stand to learn a lot about Mars and how planets form and evolve.
MMX has been more than a decade in the making and involved input from agencies and companies around the globe. This photo shows the project's manager, Yasuhiro Kawakatsu, standing in front of two parts of the probe inside a clean room at the Tanegashima Space Center in August. (Image credit: Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP via Getty Images)
If the moons did form via an impact scenario, the samples MMX collects may also contain actual pieces of Mars for researchers to study.
If Phobos is a chunk of Mars, that would be a real boon to NASA, which canceled its Mars Sample Return program — a mission that would have retrieved samples collected by the Perseverance rover — earlier this year. The agency's researchers will receive up to 15% of the MMX samples to analyze.
MMX will also shed light on Mars' ancient history and evolution, as well as analyzing the planet's moons. It will depart the Red Planet at some point in late 2030. (Image credit: JAXA/MMX)This atmospheric data could temporarily fill a gap left by the recent death of NASA's iconic MAVEN spacecraft, which stopped sending data back to Earth late last year.
Experts have described MMX as a "transformative leap" and "paradigm-shifting" for Martian science. (Image credit: DLR )
Other experts are hopeful that the MMX findings could help lay the groundwork for future missions to explore — and perhaps colonize — Mars. "The samples from MMX will bring forth paradigm-shifting science on the Mars system for generations to come, especially as NASA prepares to send the first humans to Mars," Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a recent statement.
The next sample-return trip to Mars will be China's Tianwen-3 mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2028 and will aim to land on and retrieve samples directly from the Red Planet's surface, according to Space.com.
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