The Japanese space agency, JAXA, will today launch one of its most ambitious missions to Mars: MMX (Martian Moons Exploration). As its English name suggests, its purpose will be to study two of Mars’ moons, Deimos and Phobos. It won’t be the first mission to do so, but it will be the first, if all goes well, to bring a sample of one of them back to Earth. With missions like the Chinese Chang’e, which brought back samples from the Moon, we’ve seen the importance of being able to directly analyze material collected here from outside our planet.
No matter how equipped the rovers are with internal laboratories, more in-depth analysis can always be done from Earth. For this reason, there are many expectations in this mission which, incidentally, has once again proved the importance of cooperation between different space agencies rather than competing like a race.
MMX Calendar. The mission will launch from the Tanegashima Space Center on an H3 rocket at 3:41 p.m. EDT (9:41 p.m. CEST). Thus began a journey to Mars that would last 10 months. After that, his first destination will be Phobos, where he will spend three years investigating. During this period, it will deploy its IDEFIX rover and make two landing attempts to collect samples. Once this first part of the mission is complete, the probe will fly over Deimos, where it will conduct several flybys until November 2030, when it will begin its journey back to Earth. If all goes well, the capsule with Phobos samples will land in Australia in 2031.
The importance of cooperation. The Japanese company Mitsubishi Electric is responsible for manufacturing the three main MMX modules. However, the IDEFIX rover has been launched by the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatilles) and the German DLR (Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt). IDEFIX carries a suite of cameras, as well as Raman spectrometers for the MMX (RAX) and miniRAD instruments, which are responsible for analyzing the surface composition and temperature of the Phobos.
On the other hand, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) cooperate with the mission by providing hardware and communication support through the Deep Space and Estrac networks. NASA also collaborated with the development of MEGANE, an instrument responsible for measuring the elemental composition of Phobos from orbit.
Why the moon of Mars? There are many missions tasked with studying the Red Planet. There are also some spacecraft, such as Mariner 9, the Viking probe or the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, that have studied their moons as part of their Mars recovery work. Even some missions, such as the Russian Phobes-Grant, focused only on their analysis, but they did not succeed. So far no mission has achieved this. MMX may be the first. And the truth is that it is important to do this, since the origin of Phobos and Deimos is quite mysterious and it is understood that, if we could unravel it, we would understand the origin of the solar system better.
guess. There are two hypotheses about the origin of these two moons. On the one hand, due to their similarity to D-type asteroids, it is believed that they may have formed further out in the Solar System and, later, were attracted to Mars by its gravity. The problem is that the shape of its orbit doesn’t quite fit this hypothesis. The second, however, suggests that they may have originated from the collision of a large object on Mars. Something like how our own moon was formed. Unfortunately, there are also pieces that don’t quite fit together. Therefore, it is believed that, perhaps, there is a mixed origin.
To know the perfect combination of these hypotheses, we want to study the composition of the two moons in depth. More hydrogen, chlorine, sodium, and potassium would indicate a captured asteroid and less would indicate an impact source. On the other hand, if its isotopic analysis indicates a certain resemblance to Martian rocks, then the second hypothesis may have more weight. For now, we have to take it step by step and hope that the launch and journey to the Red Planet will be successful. Everything else will be seen in time. For now, you can watch the mission launch live.
Photo by JAXA
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