NASA Joins JAXA’s MMX Mission to Unlock the Secrets of Mars’ Moons

NASA is supporting JAXA’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, advancing our understanding of Mars’ moons and building on the agency’s long legacy of exploring the Red Planet.

The mission aims to characterize Phobos and Deimos, determine their origins, and return a sample of Phobos to Earth. The MMX spacecraft is scheduled to launch from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center in Japan at 3:41 p.m. EDT on Monday, October 19 (4:41 a.m. JST on Tuesday, October 20).

“The samples returned by MMX will deliver paradigm-shifting science on the Mars system for generations to come, especially as NASA prepares to send the first humans to Mars,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The NASA-JAXA sample curation partnership is extremely valuable, and I am proud that NASA Science is supporting MMX sample curation and will share portions of these samples for study as we continue to expand humanity’s understanding of the universe for the benefit of all.”

NASA’s contributions to the mission include the Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma rays and Neutrons (MEGANE) spectrograph, the Pneumatic Sampler (P-Sampler) technology demonstration, communications and navigation support from the Deep Space Network, and funding for U.S. scientists participating on the MMX science team.

Scientists have long debated the origins of Mars’ two moons. The data and samples collected by MMX will help answer essential questions about these moons and the history of the solar system.

“Phobos and Deimos may be the remains of a massive impact on Mars that sent material into orbit around the planet, or they could be ancient asteroids captured by Mars’ gravity billions of years ago,” said Tom Statler, MMX program executive and program scientist at NASA Headquarters. “Having the answer will help illuminate that early era when Earth and the other inner planets may have been acquiring much of their water and organic compounds.”

The MEGANE spectrograph—pronounced meh-GAH-nay, the Japanese word for eyeglasses—will help scientists determine what Phobos is made of by measuring neutrons and gamma rays emitted from the moon’s surface and identifying its chemical elemental composition, providing important clues about its origin.

Mounted on one of the spacecraft’s landing legs, the P-Sampler is designed to collect a ground sample from Phobos. The system gathers surface material using bursts of high-pressure nitrogen gas, complementing JAXA’s C-Sampler, which will extract cores from a few inches deeper. NASA will obtain and curate about 15% of the total returned sample at the Johnson Space Center Astromaterials Lab in Houston, making it available for research for decades.

Another key element of NASA’s contribution to MMX is its scientific partnership with JAXA. NASA-supported researchers are working alongside international colleagues to help reveal the story of Phobos and will use mission data and returned samples to uncover new clues about the moon’s origin and the evolution of the Mars system.

The MMX spacecraft will arrive at Mars in August 2027 to begin surveying the Red Planet’s two moons. After surveying Phobos in detail, the spacecraft will collect a sample of the moon’s surface no earlier than December 2028 and deliver it to Earth in 2031.

The MEGANE instrument was developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, developed the spacecraft’s pneumatic sampler mechanism. NASA’s contributions to the MMX mission were developed under the agency’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

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