Japan's Foray into the Moons of Mars
We know far less about the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos than about their mother planet. A Japanese mission is set to change this from 2025 and later even bring rock material to Earth. The researchers hope that this will provide many new insights into the formation of Mars and the solar system.
Earth and its outer neighbor Mars are the only two planets in the inner solar system that are orbited by moons. The red planet is also the most Earth-like body in the solar system and may once have supported life. Like our satellite, the two Mars moons Phobos and Deimos - Greek: fear and terror - promise to provide valuable information about the formation and early development phase of their mother planet. The Japanese space probe Martian Moons eXploration (MMX), which will be launched in 2024, is dedicated to this goal.
The origin and early development of our moon are still being studied today. Analysis of lunar rocks brought to Earth by the American Apollo and Russian Luna missions provided a great deal of information about the prehistory of the Earth-Moon system. Meteorites, which have been proven to come from the moon, also contributed to this. Similarly, with the Red Planet, meteorites can be used to study the processes that long ago prevailed further out in the colder zones of the early solar system. These also had an influence on the development of the young earth.
Mars has been the destination of many space probes since 1965, some of which landed there successfully. Among other things, they dropped five rovers to study its surface up close. …
