Japan Launches Historic MMX Sample-Return Mission to Mars' Moon Phobos (space.com) 39
Japan has successfully launched its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to study Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Scheduled to arrive in August 2027, "MMX will become the first spacecraft to land on and return samples from Phobos for study back on Earth, which scientists think could shed light on a decades-old mystery about the moons' origins" and resolve whether they were formed from a giant impact or were captured asteroids, reports Space.com. From the report: It was the 10th liftoff of Japan's expendable, two-stage H3 rocket, which was jointly developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. After clearing its launch pad today, the 207-foot-tall (63 meters) launch vehicle flew a nominal trajectory through its ascent corridor over the Pacific Ocean, jettisoning its four solid boosters in pairs just before the flight clock reached two minutes. The rocket shed its payload fairings about one minute and 20 seconds later, exposing MMX to the vacuum of space for the first time. [...] MMX is now under its own power, and on course for Mars.
The interplanetary transit will last about 10 months, with the spacecraft scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in August 2027. When it does, MMX's propulsion module will execute an orbital insertion burn to place itself in a quasi-satellite orbit (QSO) around Phobos, which places MMX within the space around the moon as both circle Mars. MMX will spend about three years in the Martian system, devoting much of that time to studying the 14-mile-wide (22 km) Phobos with its science instruments. The spacecraft also carries the IDEFIX rover, a joint effort of the space agencies of France and Germany, which is scheduled to deploy to the surface of Phobos in late 2028 or early 2029.
After a mapping campaign to select suitable landing sites, MMX will perform two separate touchdowns on Phobos to collect and stow samples in the spacecraft's return capsule. Following its second landing and sample collection, MMX will briefly return to QSO with Phobos before transferring to a more elongated orbit around Mars that intersects with the planet's smaller moon, Deimos, which is just 8 miles (14 km) in diameter. During the last several months of its time around Mars, MMX will perform a series of Deimos flybys before departing for Earth in November 2030. If all goes according to plan, the MMX sample-return capsule will land in Australia in 2031. You can watch a recording of the launch on YouTube.
The interplanetary transit will last about 10 months, with the spacecraft scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in August 2027. When it does, MMX's propulsion module will execute an orbital insertion burn to place itself in a quasi-satellite orbit (QSO) around Phobos, which places MMX within the space around the moon as both circle Mars. MMX will spend about three years in the Martian system, devoting much of that time to studying the 14-mile-wide (22 km) Phobos with its science instruments. The spacecraft also carries the IDEFIX rover, a joint effort of the space agencies of France and Germany, which is scheduled to deploy to the surface of Phobos in late 2028 or early 2029.
After a mapping campaign to select suitable landing sites, MMX will perform two separate touchdowns on Phobos to collect and stow samples in the spacecraft's return capsule. Following its second landing and sample collection, MMX will briefly return to QSO with Phobos before transferring to a more elongated orbit around Mars that intersects with the planet's smaller moon, Deimos, which is just 8 miles (14 km) in diameter. During the last several months of its time around Mars, MMX will perform a series of Deimos flybys before departing for Earth in November 2030. If all goes according to plan, the MMX sample-return capsule will land in Australia in 2031. You can watch a recording of the launch on YouTube.
Sorry to say it, but MMX will fail (Score:5, Funny)
What if the conditions on Phobos require it to float at various points? MMX can't do floating at any point, and so they'll have to wait for the American Micro Devices that can do it and copy that and SSEnd those instead.
Re: Sorry to say it, but MMX will fail (Score:4, Funny)
The overall instruction set will be good enough for a flythrough... of a castle.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Sorry to say it, but MMX will fail (Score:5, Funny)
I've chainsawed more than one imp with MMX present, no worries.
Re: (Score:1)
There's an extremely narrow IQ range required to find your "joke" funny - maybe somewhere between 90 and 115.
Not a high bar...
Re:Sorry to say it, but MMX will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely an age thing. Someone born in the last 30 years isn't likely to know. But then someone born in the last 30 years probably has never seen Slashdot either.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you telling us tacitly that didn't laugh because yours is less than 90, but above 70, so you still managed to post a comment?
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you professor. I get it, you're saying many people would find it funny? That's not bad, when you consider I wrote it for my own humorous purpose. Anyway, would love to see you make a more broadly appealing and funnier joke.
Re: (Score:2)
Not a high bar...
That's only until you realize that half of the population are more stupid than that.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's hope the mission doesn't run into any f00f [wikipedia.org].
It'll have good graphics. (Score:2)
With Multi Media eXtentions (MMX) the pics returned from this mission will be great.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Salesguy: "This is a Pentium 266 MMX."
Me: "What's an MMX, and why do I need 266 of it?"
Salesguy: "It's like megahertz, but better."
Good ol' days.
Re: (Score:2)
I know the guy that invented MMX. I worked with him at Intel.
He was not a sales guy.
It grew into todays SIMD instructions which are pretty neat.
However MMX was a way to squeeze more performance out of existing registers, while today's AVX512 is a whole bucketload of extra logic.
Manned mission? (Score:2)
Did they send the Doomguy in the probe, just in case something goes wrong?
Too late ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm surprised it's not the MMeX mission. Often Japanese speakers write eX when they want to indicate that it is pronounced... Well, "eX". Like the letter X. Otherwise it might be confused as a "ze" sound.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Phobos' gravity (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I know it's not necessary to return materials to Earth for analysis
It many not be necessary, but certainly the instruments available on Earth to analyze samples are vastly more capable than whatever the lander has, given that it's only 5 tons and 90% of that mass is power/navigation machinery and propellant.
Pretty cool (Score:3)
However you want to slice this up, this is really very cool. When I was a kid, we were amazed at some grainy photos of the planets, and yet now, we're going to grab actual samples of... not the planets (that's underway elsewhere), but of the moons of those planets. Then were going to bring them back to look at them. That's really pretty awesome.
Well done JAXA et al. Happy landings!
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wikipedia says Phobos' escape velocity is 11.39 m/s (41 km/h), which is enough to hold down a jumping human. So all the probe needs
Re: (Score:2)
Hard time orbiting the moon? Not because of the moon's size, at least not directly. Orbital speed is ~1600 m/s, which is pretty close to the speed a spacecraft arriving at the moon from Earth already has.
Orbiting the moon is difficult because the moon's density is not uniform, so its gravitational field varies a bit (mascons).
Phobos' gravity is about 0.5 mg, and this seems to be too low to allow a satellite to orbit it. MMX will use a quasi-satellite orbit [wikipedia.org]
That's one Doomed Space Marine (Score:2)
I've seen how this one ends.
UAC (Score:2)
Buzz Aldrin (Score:2)
Buzz has spoken on more than one occasion about a radio source and a structure on Phobos that is being kept hush-hush.
Then he stopped talking about it and won't say why when asked.
"I got bad information from a dope playing a practical joke on me" would have been easy.
Maybe Japan will show something interesting. Maybe the probe will mysteriously fail at an inopportune time.
I'll be glad to see the question resolved if it can be.
Mysteries are fun but discoveries are more interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If the samples contain leather... (Score:2)