JAXA is about to perform a Phobos sample return mission

4 comments

• Animats 1 hour ago
  Nice. These missions that tell us the basics about objects in the Solar System are more useful than, say, re-visiting the moon or Mars.

  Venus and Europa could use some attention. Anything underway?

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  • hparadiz 1 minute ago
    Sample return from Venus is practically impossible with our current tech.
  • lucaslazarus 10 minutes ago
    All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
  • tagami 1 hour ago
    Europa clipper launched 2 years ago arrives in 2030. DAVINCI, a Venusian probe, is slated net 2033
  • godshatter 1 hour ago
    Apparently five Venus missions (DAVINCI, VERITAS, Envision, Venus Life Finder, and Venus Orbiter) all in the next five years or so: https://www.space.com/astronomy/venus/these-5-venus-missions...

    For Europa, Europa Clipper Mission (already on the way): https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/mission-time...

    ... and JUICE (already on the way): https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice

    There might be others, those are just what I found in a quick search.
• dvh 2 hours ago
  I hope they make some photos of Phobos monolith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_monolith
• TGower 2 hours ago
  JAXA does great work, they also publish the highest resolution open access global surface elevation model. Really impressive for a country with about 1/10th the GDP of the US.
• hbarka 2 hours ago
  I wonder how this mission compares in scale to the JAXA Hayabusa comet interceptor done twenty years ago.