While NASA has successfully landed nine spacecraft on Mars over the past 50 years and China scored a 2021 touchdown, no one has ever reached Phobos or its sidekick Deimos. And no one has managed to fetch samples from Mars, let alone its moons.
https://apnews.com/article/japan-mars-moon-mission-fb51fbbf90374631e8ae658f9ca461
JAXA launched their MMX (Martian Moon Explorer) spacecraft successfully on October 20th. It hopes to arrive next summer.
And return with samples by 2031. Glad they got the initial launch window in time.
Nobody’s ever done this before. Let alone in conjunction with several other countries.
(The image is from another version of the article, but I wanted to post the original AP one bc it has a video clip of the rocket launch.)
