Japan Is Sending a Lander to a Martian Moon, And It'll Be Back by 2030

[Judi Lynn]

NANCY ATKINSON, UNIVERSE TODAY22 FEB 2020

Sending a mission to moons of Mars has been on the wish list for mission planners and space enthusiasts for quite some time. For the past few years, however, a team of Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) engineers and scientists have been working on putting such a mission together.

Now, JAXA announced this week that the Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) mission has been greenlighted to move forward, with the goal of launching an orbiter, lander — and possibly a rover — with sample return capability in 2024.

For the past three years, MMX has been in what JAXA calls a Pre-Project phase, which focuses on research and analysis for potential missions, such as simulating landings to improve spacecraft design. Now that the mission has been moved to the development phase, the focus will be on moving ahead with the development of mission hardware and software.

The MMX mission appears to be based on JAXA's successful small body exploration and sample return missions. The Hayabusa spacecraft's journey to asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and successfully completed a sample return to Earth in 2010, despite numerous hurdles and glitches on the spacecraft.

More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/japan-is-sending-a-mission-to-the-martian-moons-and-it-ll-be-back-by-2030?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1