Japan launching historic mission to Mars

TOKYO, October 19 ------ Japanese scientists are readying a mission to Mars’ moons to retrieve samples that could help unlock the origins of the Solar System and life on Earth, in what aims to be the first round trip to the Martian region.

The unmanned Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) probe, a collaboration with US and European space agencies as well as numerous universities and tech companies, could also help lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration. The flagship H3 rocket carrying the MMX is set to blast off from the Tanegashima Space Center Tuesday at 4:41 am, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The spacecraft will arrive near Mars one year later, where it will orbit its moon Phobos for up to three years before landing and collecting at least 10 grams of material from the surface.

A rover dubbed IDEFIX — the French name for the comic hero Asterix’s dog — will first conduct surface observations aimed at ensuring a safe landing. “The sampling (from) Phobos is of course the world’s first, but it means... this is the first round trip to the Martian system,” MMX’s project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Impact or capture

JAXA hopes the mission will reveal how Mars and its two moons formed, a key piece of knowledge in working out how the Solar System was born. One theory for the origin of the Martian moons — the “giant impact” hypothesis — is that they formed after a celestial body collided with Mars.

The “capture” hypothesis, meanwhile, postulates that the moons are asteroids captured by Mars’ gravity. Determining which is right will help reveal “how a habitable environment for life might have arisen on the terrestrial planets,” JAXA said, referring to the four rocky worlds closest to the Sun — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

Deep in the ‘gravity well’

MMX is a collaboration with France’s National Center for Space Studies (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and about 20 universities and tech companies. The development of the spacecraft’s landing legs was particularly difficult, as gravity on Phobos is extremely weak, JAXA scientists say.

Japan’s unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) — the “Moon Sniper” — tipped over after touching down on Earth’s Moon in 2024, but still transmitted data and survived several two-week lunar nights. One of the differences between JAXA’s past asteroid probes and the MMX mission is that this time “we have to travel very close to Mars and return,” which means escaping the planet’s heavy gravity, Kawakatsu told reporters.

Source: manilatimes.net