Overview
- The MMX spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Tanegashima on Monday and begin a roughly five‑year mission that aims to reach the Mars system in 2027 and return samples to Earth in 2031.
- JAXA says the mission will collect a minimum of 10 grams of material from Phobos using two sampling systems: a pressurized‑gas device provided with U.S. support and a Japanese coring sampler that reaches about 2 cm deep.
- A French‑German rover named Idefix will land on Phobos around 2029 to map terrain and scout safe collection sites before the main lander attempts surface operations in 2030.
- NASA, ESA and European partners contribute instruments, communications and engineering; NASA provided a gamma‑ray/neutron instrument and one sampler and will retain a portion of returned material for curation.
- Phobos’s gravity is about 1/2,000 of Earth’s, so MMX uses four‑legged shock‑absorbing landing gear, slow, precision surface operations and dual sampling methods to reduce bounce and protect sample integrity while testing techniques for future Mars exploration.