日本MMX任务从火卫一采集样本

they are misshapen objects just 22 kilometers and 12 kilometers across, respectively.

a hardy bacterium capable of withstanding dehydration and intense radiation

In about 100 million years, gravitational tides will tear Phobos apart like warm bread, transforming it into a dusty ring system.

Before MMX lands, it will swoop close to the moon, pop open a hatch, and drop off the 25-kilogram rover, developed by JAXA’s French and German partners.

With a push from its thrusters, a return module will begin the yearlong odyssey home.

But NASA’s ambitious $11 billion plan to return those samples ran into technical and financial troubles.

In 2030, it will split apart, leaving behind the landing legs and instruments on its exploration module.

its diminutive partner, Deimos (“dread”)

Phobos (ancient Greek for “fear”), one of the two small, battered moons of Mars

the moon orbits just 6000 kilometers or so above the planet’s surface

Kris Zacny, vice president of exploration systems at Honeybee Robotics, which built one of MMX’s sample extractors.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been collecting and caching painstakingly selected rock samples for eventual return to Earth.

a 4.6-billion-year-old relic as old as Earth itself

That same year, the MMX team will be in the Australian outback, waiting for a messenger from a more distant moon.

Those precious few grams of material could resolve the mystery of Phobos’s origin—and, potentially, that of its diminutive partner, Deimos (“dread”). Scientist…

But Japan’s $350 million Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is going to do something even more audacious: Fly to Phobos (ancient Greek for “fear”), one of…