Overview
- The MMX spacecraft lifted off from Tanegashima aboard an H3 rocket on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, successfully separated from its launcher and is now on course for Mars.
- JAXA plans for MMX to arrive in the Martian system in mid‑2027, map Phobos and Deimos, deploy the IDEFIX rover for about 100 days to pick sampling sites, and perform two short surface landings in late 2028 to early 2029 before returning a sample capsule to Australia in 2031.
- The probe carries three spectrometers (two provided by NASA and one by CNES), a dust sensor, a robotic arm with a drill designed to reach about 2 cm, and a pressurized gas injector to collect at least 10 grams of material from Phobos.
- Sampling and landings must be done autonomously because Phobos’s extremely weak gravity and Mars’s pull make touch‑down and takeoff risky, and mission designers are relying on lessons from Japan’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 sample‑return missions.
- MMX is an international project involving NASA, CNES, DLR and other partners with an estimated budget near $578 million, and its samples could settle whether Mars’s moons are captured asteroids or formed by a giant impact and may contain tiny embedded grains from Mars that would reshape studies of the planet and future exploration planning.