MMX lifts off to Mars’s moon Phobos
The Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission launched into space on an H3 rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center at 04:41 JST on 20 October 2026 (20:41 BST / 21:41 CEST on 19 October 2026). You can rewatch JAXA's livestream of the launch here.
“I would like to congratulate JAXA and the entire MMX team for this successful launch," says Professor Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science.
"The launch was spectacular, and JAXA's H3 launcher performed fantastically to send MMX onward to Mars,” says Elliot Sefton-Nash, ESA Project Scientist for MMX. “The team are celebrating, and now even more motivated to prepare for arrival at Mars next summer to start investigating its moons Phobos and Deimos up close.”
With the successful launch, MMX begins its mission to the martian moons. MMX will be the first spacecraft to orbit Mars’s moon Phobos, the first to collect samples from this moon's surface, and the first to return to Earth from the Mars system.
MMX is led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the French space agency (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the European Space Agency (ESA). It is a Mission of Opportunity in ESA's Science Programme.
ESA provided the spacecraft’s deep space communication equipment, as well as ground station support from the Estrack network to send commands and receive data from the spacecraft.
European scientists appointed by ESA are directly involved in the mission science team. They conduct their own specific research projects, including planning the science observations to be made, analysing the data collected by MMX's onboard instruments, and studying the samples that will be brought back from Phobos.
[GIF description: An H3 rocket carrying JAXA’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission launches from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. The clip starts with a close-up of the rocket thrusters firing, before switching to a wider view showing lift-off in the darkness, with a beach in the foreground.]
