Sometime in the early to mid-2020s, the capsule of the Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to arrive at the moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos. These are small and desolate places, but one goal of the mission is large: to collect samples from the moons and bring them back to Earth. …
Continue reading "Planetary Protection and the Moons of Mars"
Artist impression of JAXA's MMX spacecraft around Mars (JAXA). Japan in planning to launch a mission to visit the two moons of Mars in 2024. The spacecraft will touchdown on the surface of Phobos, gathering a sample to bring back to Earth. But what is so important about a moon the size of a city? …
Illustration of Mars with its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ.) The global success rate for sending missions to land on the moons of Mars has hardly been impressive -- coming in at zero out of three attempts. They were all led by the Russian (or former Soviet) space agencies, …
Continue reading "Phobos and Deimos: Captured Asteroids or Cut From Ancient Mars?"
Many Worlds 