JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, developed with NASA, ESA, and the French and German space agencies, aims to survey Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, land on Phobos, and collect a sample to return to Earth. The core scientific question is whether these moons are captured asteroids or debris from a giant impact, similar to the leading hypothesis for how Earth's own Moon formed. The mission builds on techniques from Japan's Hayabusa 2 asteroid sample return, is slated to launch October 20, and aims to bring samples back to Earth by 2031.
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The sample return capsule is planned to land in Australia, mirroring Hayabusa 2's landing approach.
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Hayabusa 2 used a small detonation to loosen an asteroid's surface material before collection, a technique referenced as a precedent for MMX's more complex sample retrieval.
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51:27many of you know I'm a big space fan, so pulled a lot of space stuff. >> Mhm. >> For this, uh, but this is some of the most exciting things at the frontier, uh, that people all feel very resonant around. And our next story is going to be about JAXA's Martian moon exploration mission. I should say Martian Moon's exploration mission. We're now looking at their fancy video breakdown of what we're going to do. >> And JAXA, real quick, is the Japanese >> Yes, excuse me. >> version of NASA. >> Correct. That's correct. And this is a mission that is uh in collaboration with NASA as well as the European Space Agency, ESA, along with both the French
52:09and German space agencies. The idea is to do a survey of Mars's two moons, Phobos and Daimos, and to land on Phobos to take to take a sample. >> Okay. >> Um, and you know, so we're seeing here it's getting close and it's doing slowing down >> cuz you know, we got to slow it down. >> And what what we've covered on the pod before here, right? And I'll actually pull up this next video example where we're going to see it's going to drop its little probe. This is very similar to the Hibusa 2. >> Very similar. Yes. >> Um and it's effectively like the level up where they, you know, took a sample
52:50from an asteroid which has been returned to Earth. >> And so now we're like, okay, let's do one better. And so this is a very interesting. >> We're now seeing the solar panels pop out, >> the wheel structure, >> right? And it's it's super fascinating. Uh it takes a village to make something like this happen and then it goes and retrieves it. >> Retrieves it, right? >> Yeah. From the surface, comes back up again. Very similar to Hayabusa 2, which we covered on the pod. And then it's going to return back to Earth, and then it's going to just shoot it apparently at Australia. >> Australia. [laughter] Yeah. Um, but the core scientific question that it seems like they're looking to
53:31answer with this is are Mars' moons captured asteroids or are they debris created by a giant impact? >> Ah, okay. Okay. kind of like cuz there's a hypothesis that our own moon is created by uh debris from giant impact when a Mars-sized object ran into us like a you know a few hundred million years into our existence like 4 billion years ago. >> That's that's exactly what's interesting. And we now know we can land on something, send something down, collect something. And when we talked about Hibusa 2, it's like had a little detonation to loosen up the the asteroid surface to be able to collect it and
54:12come up. And so this is going to be again an interesting next step here. Um it's it's sort of like uh Jax is moving up from the championship to the Prem. They're moving up a division in complexity. Uh and so we shall see. Um this is now uh slated for October 20th uh for a launch window. >> Okay. and looking to return samples to Earth by 2031. It is a long drive.
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