Mars satellite "Phobos" sand plan to bring back with spacecraft JAXA February 19, 19:38
To explore Mars and its origins, JAXA has announced a plan to land a spacecraft on the Mars satellite Phobos and bring back its surface sand in 2029.
JAXA is working on a project called MMX, which will launch a spacecraft four years later to explore the origins of Mars' satellites and investigate the formation of Mars and the solar system.
A panel of experts held at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology approved a plan to land the spacecraft on Mars' satellite "Phobos" on March 19 and bring back its surface sand to Earth in 2029.
"Phobos" is approximately 23 kilometers in diameter and is about 9,000 kilometers from Mars.
It is the first time in the world to bring a sample back to Earth from a Mars satellite, and a JAXA representative should be able to get a lot of information on Mars, since many of Phobos have come from Mars. And
JAXA's project manager, Yasuhiro Kawakatsu, said, "I want to succeed in sample return from small objects that Japan is good at and clarify the formation of the solar system."