For space scientists of all stripes, few goals are as crucial as bringing pieces of Mars, of asteroids, of other planets and moons back to Earth for the kind of intensive study only possible here. Space missions can, and have, told us many truths about the solar system, but having a piece of Mars …
Sometime in the early to mid-2020s, the capsule of the Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to arrive at the moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos. These are small and desolate places, but one goal of the mission is large: to collect samples from the moons and bring them back to Earth. …
Continue reading “Planetary Protection and the Moons of Mars”
Japan in planning to launch a mission to visit the two moons of Mars in 2024. The spacecraft will touchdown on the surface of Phobos, gathering a sample to bring back to Earth. But what is so important about a moon the size of a city? Unlike the spherical shape of the Earth’s moon, the …
The global success rate for sending missions to land on the moons of Mars has hardly been impressive — coming in at zero out of three attempts. They were all led by the Russian (or former Soviet) space agencies, in collaboration with organizations ranging from the Chinese and Bulgarian space agencies to the Paris Observatory …
Continue reading “Phobos and Deimos: Captured Asteroids or Cut From Ancient Mars?”
American attention regarding space missions is, not surprisingly, focused primarily on NASA missions. But there is a lot more exploration underway, and we should know about it. This is a guest column by Elizabeth Tasker, an Associate Professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, and whose book, “The Planet Factory”, comes out in November …
Continue reading “Phobos and Deimos: Captured Asteroids or Cut From Ancient Mars?”
Many Worlds 