NASA announced that it has partnered with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for a Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. More specifically, the teams will visit Phobos and Deimos, land on the surface of the former, and collect a surface sample.
Both agencies hope to return the sample back to Earth in 2029. NASA will provide its Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma rays and Neutrons (MEGANE) spectrograph instrument, while a Pneumatic Sampler (P-Sampler) technology demonstration is also going to hitch a ride aboard the MMX mission. The goal is to figure out if Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids in the Mars system or just fragments from the planet itself.
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A team at Honeybee Robotics sponsored by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate designed and built the P-Sampler. MEGANE, built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, was developed under NASA’s Discovery Program,” said the agency.
