{"id":741,"date":"2026-10-24T14:01:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T14:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=741"},"modified":"2026-10-24T14:01:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T14:01:26","slug":"japan-mmx-mission-mars-moon-phobos-sample-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=741","title":{"rendered":"JAPAN JUST LAUNCHED A SPACECRAFT TO STEAL A SCOOP OF MARS\u2019S MOON! | Ten grams of Phobos dust, a rover on a space potato, and a 2031 landing in the Australian desert. Nobody has ever pulled this off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GRAB IT AND RUN! A spacecraft has launched from Japan headed for <strong>Phobos<\/strong>, the bigger of Mars\u2019s two moons, where it will try to scoop up some moon dust and fly it back to Earth, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cmvgxvkv54w1o\">BBC<\/a> reported. If it works, it\u2019ll be the <strong>first time ever<\/strong> a sample from Mars or its moons is analysed in labs here on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>The mission is called <strong>Mars Moons Exploration (MMX)<\/strong> and it\u2019s led by Japan\u2019s space agency, JAXA. It\u2019s due at Phobos in <strong>August 2027<\/strong>. It\u2019ll study the smaller moon, Deimos, on the way in, then drop a small rover onto Phobos to scout a landing spot before the main spacecraft touches down itself, deploys a robotic arm and two samplers, and packs the dust into a capsule.<\/p>\n<p>That capsule is due to land in the <strong>Woomera desert of South Australia in 2031<\/strong>. The haul is tiny, just <strong>10 grams<\/strong>. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to have kilos back from a surface in order to do science. So it\u2019s worth every gram,\u201d said Dr Chrysa Avdellidou of Leicester University, who is working with the mission.<\/p>\n<p>Landing won\u2019t be easy. Phobos is only about <strong>20km (12 miles)<\/strong> across, shaped like a space potato, and has barely any gravity of its own while sitting right next to a much bigger planet. \u201cThere hasn\u2019t yet been a successful mission to go to Phobos and bring a bit back to Earth,\u201d said Prof Sara Russell of the Natural History Museum, the mission\u2019s deputy for sample analysis.<\/p>\n<p>The big question it could settle: were Mars\u2019s moons blasted out of the planet by a giant impact, or are they wandering asteroids Mars captured? Russell says the chemistry should make the answer \u201cpretty much immediately obvious.\u201d And because Phobos orbits so close, the sample may even contain grains of Mars itself.<\/p>\n<p>Why it matters: NASA and ESA\u2019s own Mars Sample Return mission has been effectively cancelled after US Congress halted its funding, and China plans its own Mars sample mission in 2028, also aiming for a 2031 return. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/space\/space-exploration\/worlds-first-round-trip-mission-to-mars-has-launched-why-it-could-be-a-transformative-leap-for-science\">Live Science<\/a> called MMX the world\u2019s first round-trip mission to the Mars system.<\/p>\n<p><em>Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cmvgxvkv54w1o\">BBC News<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/space\/space-exploration\/worlds-first-round-trip-mission-to-mars-has-launched-why-it-could-be-a-transformative-leap-for-science\">Live Science<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ten grams of Phobos dust, a rover on a space potato, and a 2031 landing in the Australian desert. Nobody has ever pulled this off<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bb-mmx-phobos-1024.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}