A Japanese spacecraft is rocketing towards Mars on a quest to explore its mysterious moons and bring back samples.
Five of the world’s space agencies joined forces for the five-year mission that will attempt to land a robotic prospector plus a rover on Phobos, the largest and closest of Mars’ two moons.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), which is leading the bold sampling effort, launched the spacecraft before dawn from the country’s main spaceport on Tanegashima Island.
Officials declared success an hour later when the spacecraft separated as planned from the rocket’s upper stage. Flight controllers burst into applause and jumped to their feet, shaking hands and embracing.
While Nasa has successfully landed nine spacecraft on Mars over the past 50 years and China scored a 2021 touchdown, no-one has ever reached Phobos or its sidekick Deimos. And no-one has managed to fetch samples from Mars, let alone its moons.
If successful, bits of dust, soil and rocks from Phobos will arrive on Earth in 2031.
“There’s a lot of adrenaline and a lot of excitement and a lot of wow,” said Nasa astrophysicist Tom Statler, who is involved with the project.
Japan has an edge going in, with two asteroid sample returns already under its cosmic belt.
Phobos is a lumpy, potato-shaped rock just 14 miles or so across. Examining pieces of it can explain how Mars’ moons — and possibly moons elsewhere — came to be.
Dubbed MMX for Martian Moons Exploration, the 578 million dollar (£434 million) mission features a hefty five-tonne spacecraft that should reach Mars by late next summer.
It will sync up with Phobos’ tight orbit around the red planet, before ejecting the French-German rover that’s named Idefix after the white terrier in the Asterix comics.
No bigger than a microwave oven, Idefix will plop onto Phobos by itself, bouncing for several minutes before coming to a halt in the moon’s extraordinarily low gravity.
The four-wheeled rover is designed to right itself if it lands upside down. All bets are off, though, if it sinks into soft soil or gets wedged between rocks, the French Space Agency’s Julien Baroukh said.
Once the rover’s solar panels are deployed, the vehicle can no longer right itself, he added, which is why it will move at a glacial one millimetre per second (0.04in per second).
Idefix will serve as a “scout for safety,” according to Mr Baroukh, as it prowls around Phobos for 100 days.
Japanese flight controllers want to avoid powdery soil and rough terrain when the mothership – a four-legged stationary lander – descends to the surface to gather samples in late 2028 or 2029.
The lander will spend just two hours on Phobos, drilling and vacuuming up at least 10 grams (one-third of an ounce) of material, before launching back into space.
It will study Deimos during a series of fly-bys before leaving the Martian neighbourhood in 2030 and returning to Earth for a 2031 sample delivery in the Australian desert.
It is a treacherous undertaking, with wreckage littering the path.
The moons’ names are not exactly comforting: Phobos is Greek for “fear” and Deimos means “dread”. The classical figures are the twin sons of the god of war Ares – Mars in Roman mythology.
Russia stumbled in all three of its Phobos attempts as well as many other Mars endeavours. In its only other Mars mission, Japan failed to get a spacecraft into orbit around the red planet. Even Nasa has had its share of flops in a bid to answer the burning question: Did life ever exist on Mars?
By studying Mars’ moons, scientists hope to learn whether Phobos and Deimos formed in the aftermath of an ancient collision between Mars and a battering space rock. It is also possible that the moons might be stray asteroids that became ensnared in Mars’ gravity.
Either way, scientists anticipate finding traces of Mars on Phobos, making the samples an irresistible two-for-one that should help demystify planetary and moon formation, and perhaps even the recipe for life.
The findings will help shape future Mars missions, including those by astronauts, said Nasa’s acting planetary science director Lindsay Hays.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. We are part of the first sample return mission from the Martian system,” said the German Space Agency’s rover chief Markus Grebenstein.
Japan is not the only one looking to claim the scientific riches packed into the Martian system’s rocks and dirt.
China plans to launch a sample return mission to Mars in 2028, while Nasa is still debating how to retrieve the more than 30 sample tubes collected by the Perseverance Mars rover, the new champion for off-Earth driving.
Japan and China could be neck-and-neck in getting samples back from the Martian system – both are targeting a return date of 2031.
Japan is investing 350 million dollars (£262 million) in this mission. Nasa is contributing 87 million dollars (£65.3 million), the French Space Agency about 68 million dollars (£51 million), the German Space Agency about 56 million dollars (£42.04 million) and the European Space Agency some 17 million dollars (£12.7 million).