Content tagged "JAXA".
7 items (7 articles, 0 stories)
Japan's MMX spacecraft is heading to Phobos, the tiny, misshapen moon of Mars, to scoop up 10 grams of sand and bring it home. Is Phobos a captured asteroid or debris from an ancient impact? SORABUMI explains how a handful of dust could finally settle the question.
JAXA's MMX mission launches in fiscal year 2026 to land on Phobos, Mars's larger moon, and scoop up soil samples. Is this 22-km-wide moon a captured asteroid or a chunk of Mars itself? Isotopes in the returned dust will settle the debate. SORABUMI explains humanity's first sample-return mission from the Mars system.
ESA's Comet Interceptor will launch before its target comet has even been discovered, parking in space to wait. A mothership and two probes will approach a comet that has never before neared the sun, or possibly an interstellar visitor, from multiple directions at once. SORABUMI explains this unusual mission.
The closest photo of Japan's SLIM lander lying face-down on the Moon was taken by SORA-Q, an 80mm, 250-gram sphere built with transforming-toy technology from Takara Tomy. At roughly 1/4000th the weight of NASA's Mars rover Perseverance, why did such a small, simple design hold up so well in a brutal environment? SORABUMI explains.
On April 13, 2029, asteroid Apophis will skim past Earth at just 32,000 km — closer than geostationary satellites. During this once-in-10,000-year flyby, Earth's gravity will physically reshape the rock in real time. ESA and JAXA's Ramses mission will be there to document it.
BepiColombo, the joint ESA–JAXA mission launched in 2018, will finally enter Mercury's orbit in November 2026. Why does the journey take so long, and what makes Mercury such a puzzling world?
Using the naming of asteroid 'Torifune' as a starting point, we dig into what it means to give a name to a rock in space — IAU naming rules, the intersection of Japanese mythology and outer space, and the planetary defense mission driving Hayabusa2 forward.