Japanese MMX mission set for launch to study Martian moons

Date:
Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:44:41 +0000

Description:
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is poised to launch a planetary probe to Marss The post Japanese MMX mission set for launch to
study Martian moons appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is poised to launch a planetary probe to Marss moon Phobos, taking advantage of this years window
to reach the Red Planet on an ideal trajectory. The Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to fly on Monday, Oct. 19, at 19:41 UTC from the LA-Y2 pad at the Tanegashima Space Center atop an H3-24L rocket.

The 63 m-tall H3-24L, the most powerful variant of the Japanese H3 rocket family, will follow an eastward trajectory from Tanegashima, powered by two LE-9 engines that use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellants, plus four solid rocket boosters. The rocket, known individually as H3 F10, will also use the long fairing configuration to protect MMX from aerodynamic
forces in the lower atmosphere.



The second stage and MMX will reach an initial parking orbit around Earth at T+10:40 minutes. After the 4,480 kg MMX spacecraft separates from the rocket at T+1:11:12 hours, it will be on a trajectory that takes 10 months to reach Mars, with arrival in August 2027. MMX will orbit Mars before its main
mission to study the moons Phobos and Deimos. Artists impression of MMX near Phobos, which orbits 6,000 km above Mars. (Credit: JAXA)

Phobos, the largest moon of Mars at 27 by 22 by 18 km in size, is the
missions primary objective due to its greater variety of terrain than Deimos. However, MMX will also conduct flybys of Deimos, which is just 15 by 12 by 11 km in size, to gather additional data. Deimos is covered in a thick layer of regolith, partially burying its craters.

Phobos and Deimos, discovered telescopically in 1877, get their names from
the Greek words for fear and terror, respectively. Both moons of Mars have been imaged and studied by prior Mars missions, including Europes Mars Express, NASAs orbiter missions, and the Emirati Hope probe, launched to Mars on a Japanese rocket in 2020.

MMX will enter a quasi-satellite orbit (QSO) near Phobos around a month after arrival at Mars, as that moons gravity, only 1/1700th that of Earth, is too weak to support a regular circular orbit. The spacecraft will orbit Mars in such a way that it follows Phobos and appears to orbit the small moon, which is slowly spiraling inward toward Mars and may eventually form a ring. The
MMX spacecraft being prepared for launch. (Credit: DLR)

From its QSO, MMX will intensively study Phobos with its multinational
arsenal of 13 science instruments. The mission has extensive international involvement, with NASA providing the Mars moons Exploration with GAmma rays and NEutrons (MEGANE) instrument. In addition, Frances CNES provides the MMX InfraRed Spectrometer (MIRS), and CNES and Germanys DLR provide the IDEFIX rover.

The European Space Agency will provide support to MMX, including access to
its tracking stations in Spain, Argentina, and Australia. NASAs Deep Space Network, with its Goldstone, Madrid, and Canberra facilities, will also supplement JAXAs own deep space tracking stations in Misasa and Usuda. In addition, Europe is providing a Ka-band antenna on MMX.

The spacecrafts 13 instruments will analyze Phobos and Deimos in detail. MEGANE, which is also the Japanese word for eyeglasses, was developed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. This instrument is designed to measure energy from neutrons and gamma rays emitted by the moon, to see the elemental composition of Phobos. H3-24L F10 vehicle being prepared for launch. (Credit: JAXA) See Also MMX Updates Japanese Section NSF Store Click here to Join L2

The French-developed MIRS instrument is designed to characterize the mineral composition of Phobos and Deimos using a near-infrared imaging spectrometer. Besides the spectrometers, MMX also features several cameras, including Super Hi-Vision cameras that will observe Mars at 4K and 8K resolutions, a capability that has not been achieved at the Red Planet before.

The Telescopic Nadir imager for GeOmOrphology (TENGOO) is a telescopic camera with a resolution of 40 cm that will map surface topography and geomorphological features of Phobos and Deimos. TENGOO will work alongside
the Optical RadiOmeter composed of CHromatic Imagers (OROCHI). OROCHI is designed to image in multiple wavelengths and is a wide-angle spectroscopic camera that can identify hydrated minerals and organic matter.

The spacecraft will also study the Martian system with other tools, including the LIDAR laser altimeter, the Circum-Martian Dust Monitor, the Mass Spectrum Analyzer, and the Interplanetary Radiation Environment Monitor. Besides the instruments built into the spacecraft, MMX will also release the European-provided IDEFIX rover to the surface of Phobos. Artists impression
of the IDEFIX rover on Phobos. (Credit: DLR)

IDEFIX, named after a dog in the famous French comic Asterix, will be the first rover ever to land on a moon other than Earths own companion, and also will be the first rover ever to attempt to operate on a small body with limited gravity. The rover will try to demonstrate that it can operate in a low-gravity environment, and it is equipped with cameras, a radiometer, and a Raman spectrometer.

MMX will use two sampling tools once it lands on Phobos. The corer sampler (C-SMP) will drill more than two centimeters into the moons surface to gather core samples using a robotic arm and an actuator that employs a special shape-memory alloy. The pneumatic sampler (P-SMP) will work alongside the C-SMP to collect regolith from the surface.

The P-SMP is yet another example of international collaboration on this Japanese-led mission, as it is provided by NASA and Honeybee Robotics, a company that is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Origin. Honeybee Robotics has extensive experience in building tools for planetary missions, having developed tools for the Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity Mars rovers as well as the Mars Phoenix lander. The MMX sample return capsule during processing. (Credit: JAXA)

Once MMX enters its QSO with Phobos, it will spend over one Earth year scanning the moon, including a search for safe yet interesting landing sites, and will release IDEFIX to the surface before MMX itself lands on Phobos. The probes two landings on Phobos will occur no earlier than December 2028, and
it will spend just two to three hours on the surface collecting samples. The missions target is to collect at least 10 g of material from Phobos.

The samples will be returned to Earth in a sample return capsule, which will land in Australia in 2031. MMX will likely be the first ever mission to
return to Earth from the Martian system, and the probe will leave Mars with its samples in 2030. The samples could also become the first ever to arrive
on Earth from the Martian system, though China is planning the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission to return to Earth around 2031 as well.

MMX is not the first mission to attempt to land on Phobos, or even to return samples from the moon. The Soviet Union launched the Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 probes in 1988; Phobos 1 lost contact during interplanetary cruise, but
Phobos 2 successfully arrived at Mars in January 1989. However, controllers lost contact with Phobos 2 in late March just before it was planned to land
on Phobos surface.



Over two decades later, Russia attempted to return to Phobos with a lander-and-sample-return mission based on the Phobos 1 and 2 probes. The Phobos-Grunt probe launched to low-Earth orbit in 2011, but its upper stage failed to ignite, preventing the probe from reaching Mars. Phobos-Grunt ended up reentering Earths atmosphere, resulting in a destructive end.

MMX aims to succeed where these past missions failed. Scientists hope that
the samples brought back from Phobos will answer whether the Martian moons were captured asteroids or were formed when a large body impacted Mars, as Earths Moon is thought to have formed.

The samples could also tell scientists a great deal about the early Martian systems evolution, especially since Phobos surface is thought to be covered with material ejected from Mars by meteorite impacts. If this is true, the samples could contain direct evidence of conditions including water and biosignatures on the Martian surface. Deimos, orbiting 20,068 km above Mars, imaged by the Hope probe. (Credit: Emirates Mars Mission)

MMX is not Japans first sample return mission. JAXA has experience landing
and retrieving samples of the asteroids 25143 Itokawa and 162173 Ryugu with its Hayabusa probes. The first Hayabusa probe returned less than a gram of material from Itokawa in 2010, whereas Hayabusa2 returned 5.4 g of material from Ryugu in 2020.

The MMX launch is the third of 2026 for the H3, and the only launch to Mars during this years window, which recurs every 26 months. While MMX studies the Martian moons and, secondarily, the planet itself, a number of missions from different agencies to the Red Planet are planned for the coming years, including ESAs Rosalind Franklin rover, NASAs SR-1 Freedom , and Tianwen-3, all currently scheduled to fly in 2028.

(Lead image: H3 and MMX on the pad ahead of launch. Credit: JAXA)



The post Japanese MMX mission set for launch to study Martian moons appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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