Artist’s representation of the MMX Spacecraft
Joel Kontinen
Japan has
launched a mission to Phobos, a moon of Mars.
We may be
on the verge of solving the mystery of the Martian moons. On 20 October, the
Martian Moons exploration (MMX) spacecraft launches towards the larger of the two moons, Phobos, with the goal of bringing back a
sample that may finally explain how Phobos and its sibling, Deimos, formed.
MMX will
launch from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. If all goes to plan, it should
arrive at Mars in August 2027, entering an orbit that keeps it alongside Phobos
so it can build a detailed map of the surface. Along the way, it will also
observe the surface of Deimos.
Once the
map is complete enough, the spacecraft’s operators at the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA) will use it to pick out a spot on Phobos for MMX to
land. During one or two brief landings, it will take on two tasks: to drop off
a small rover called IDEFIX and to pick up samples. The rover is the first
anyone has ever placed on such a small cosmic body, so part of its purpose
aside from scientific observations is to confirm that a wheeled rover even works on an object with such
low gravity.
The
samples, though, are the most important part of the mission. MMX has two
different sampling devices: one that shoots a puff of gas onto the surface,
blowing dust and pebbles back up into a sampling container, and another that
blasts a hollow cylinder into the ground to take a sample a several centimetres
deep. After the samples are taken, they will be stowed away inside the
spacecraft, which will then head back towards Earth. It is expected to arrive
home in 2031.
Once these
samples get back to Earth and are analysed by scientists on the ground, they
should finally solve the mystery of how Phobos and Deimos formed. For more than a century,
researchers have debated whether the two are captured asteroids or formed from
an impact on Mars, similar to how Earth’s moon formed. On first look, their
shapes and surfaces resemble asteroids, but their circular orbits around Mars’s
equator are more consistent with the impact hypothesis. Figuring out what they
are made of should settle it once and for all.
This will
also help illuminate what the solar system was like billions of years ago when
these strange moons formed. “Having the answer will help illuminate that early
era when Earth and the other inner planets may have been acquiring much of
their water and organic compounds,” said Tom Statler, part of the NASA team that is collaborating
on the MMX mission, in a statement.
Mars and
millions pf years seem to belong together, as Darwinians believe that Mars was formed
that way.
If we are
very lucky, the samples from Phobos may even contain bonus bits of dust and
debris from Mars itself. Impacts on the planet could have
launched material into space, which would have collected on the moon’s surface
and been preserved there for billions of years. That means that these samples
could illuminate not just the history of Phobos and Deimos, but also of Mars.
Source:
Leah Crane 2026
Posts
