JAXA sent its Martian Moons eXploration mission, MMX, on its way to Mars’s moons on October 19, 2026. The spacecraft lifted off aboard an H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center, starting Japan’s bid to bring back samples from Phobos.
About 71 minutes after launch, the 4.5-metric-ton spacecraft separated, unfolded its solar panels, and established stable communications, JAXA said. That begins the first sample-return mission from a Martian moon, with a goal of bringing back at least 10 grams of Phobos regolith.
If everything stays on track, MMX will reach Mars in August 2027 after a 10-month cruise. It will then spend about three years studying Phobos and Deimos before attempting as many as two landings on Phobos in 2029, a difficult task in extremely weak gravity.
At the center of the science case is a long-running question: are Phobos and Deimos captured asteroids, or debris left over from a giant impact on Mars? To help answer that, MMX carries both a coring sampler for material below the surface and a pneumatic sampler for grains on the surface.
The mission also pulls in partners from outside Japan. NASA is providing the MEGANE spectrometer, the French space agency CNES and the German Aerospace Center DLR built the Idefix rover, and the European Space Agency, ESA, is involved too. For Japan, MMX follows Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 and marks the country’s second attempt to reach Mars after Nozomi failed in 2003.
If you follow Mars exploration, MMX is a mission to keep an eye on.
JAXA will be posting updates as the mission moves along, with the return capsule aiming for Woomera, South Australia, in 2031.
Author: Chema Carvajal Sarabia
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