Japan launches MMX probe to collect and return Phobos samples

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency lifted the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft aboard an H‑3 rocket, beginning a five‑year mission to obtain and return material from Phobos, the larger of Mars’s two moons. The probe will travel to Mars, arrive in August 2027, and spend several years orbiting the planet while the French‑German rover Idefix is deployed to identify a suitable landing spot. NASA is contributing the MEGANE gamma‑ray and neutron spectrograph, a pneumatic sampler that uses high‑pressure nitrogen bursts, and Deep Space Network communications, and will curate a portion of the returned material at Johnson Space Center. The mission plans to collect at least 10 g of regolith from two sites and return the sample to Earth, targeting a landing in Australia in 2031.