Overview
- The MMX spacecraft, which launched Monday, October 19, 2026, from Tanegashima on an H3 rocket, is now on a roughly one-year cruise to Mars to begin its campaign of study and sample collection.
- Once at Mars MMX will enter a quasi‑satellite orbit to map Phobos, study Deimos on flybys, and spend about a year in close operations before attempting two autonomous descents and short surface stays in late 2028 to early 2029.
- The probe carries three spectrometers (two from NASA and one from CNES), a dust sensor, high‑resolution cameras, a robotic arm with a drill and gas injector for sampling, and the IDEFIX rover developed by German and French partners.
- JAXA aims to collect at least 10 grams of surface material and return it to Australia around 2030, with critical descent and sampling sequencess running autonomously because round‑trip signals to Earth can take about 44 minutes.
- MMX builds on JAXA’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 sample‑return experience and could settle whether Phobos is a captured asteroid or accreted debris, while also studying a moon that will slowly spiral inward under Mars’s tides and may break up on geological timescales.