Japan is testing a probe that will collect soil on the Martian moon

Mars Moon Exploration (MMX) is the name of a robot-controlled space probe currently being developed by the Japanese space agency Jaxa.

The probe’s mission is amazing, to say the least. The plan is for MMX to land on the Martian moon Phobos once or twice, collect soil samples from there — and then swing around Deimos, Mars’ second moon, on its way to Earth.

The project has been going on since 2015, and now the development work is entering a new phase, Writes the log. According to Jaxa’s documentation, the evaluation of the space probe’s instruments and system bus, which among other things are responsible for basic functions such as power supply, communications and attitude control, is nearly complete.

The exams will be completed next year

In the next step, it will begin extensive testing, for example, of the instruments the space probe carries with it, as well as the technology used to link the probe and ground systems at the Tanegashima Space Center. These tests should be completed by the end of June 2023 – assuming everything goes as planned.

The MMX probe is expected to be launched in September 2024. A year later, the probe will land on Phobos – and return to Earth in 2029.

Searching for the origin of Phobos

The purpose of the spaceflight is to find out whether Phobos and Deimos formed from merging asteroids, or whether the moons arose from fragments of a larger orb that crashed onto the surface of Mars.

In 2018, Japan received a lot of attention as a space country after the space probe Hayabusa2 landed on the asteroid Ryuguabout 300 million kilometers from Earth.