JAXA will launch the MMX mission to study Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos. The spacecraft, scheduled to launch on October 19, aims to collect at least 10 grams of samples from Phobos and bring them back to Earth. If successful, these will be the first rock samples brought back from a Martian moon. The samples are expected to arrive in 2031, following approximately one year of travel to Mars, three years of operations and one year for the return journey. The mission will investigate whether the moons formed in a giant impact on Mars or are asteroids captured from the outer Solar System. The spacecraft will weigh 4,480 kilograms at launch, and its fuel will be divided among three tanks; the modules will separate near Mars and Deimos. Designed by Mitsubishi Electric, the spacecraft will land on Phobos, which has a radius of 11 kilometers. Because of a communication delay of up to 20 minutes, it will autonomously control its descent, landing and ascent.
Why it matters
Samples collected from Phobos could help test two different explanations for the formation of the planet by making it possible to directly study the history of bodies around Mars. The findings are of interest to researchers seeking an answer to whether Mars’ moons are the product of a major impact or asteroids captured from the outer Solar System. The mission’s lengthy timeline means that the scientific results will be obtained years after launch; therefore, every stage of the process is important for the safe return of the samples. The communication delay, meanwhile, requires the spacecraft to perform critical maneuvers on its own instead of receiving real-time instructions from Earth, highlighting the mission’s technical limits.
Background
Mars is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we published a news article mentioning it in the past 90 days; that article is dated September 2, 2026.