TANEGASHIMA, Japan, Oct. 20, 2026 - Japan's Martian Moons eXploration mission, MMX, lifted off at 04:41 local time on 20 October aboard an H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center,^[1] bound for Mars' moon Phobos.^[2] The JAXA-led mission^[3] flew on the 10th flight of the H3,^[4] and the rocket placed the spacecraft into its planned orbit about 71 minutes after launch.^[5] MMX is scheduled to reach Mars in August 2027.^[6] It carries IDEFIX, a rover developed by the French and German space agencies,^[7] and will collect samples from Phobos before returning to Earth in 2031,^[8] with the capsule planned to land in Australia.^[9] NASA contributed hardware and funding^[10] and will receive at least 15 percent of the returned samples.^[11] If it succeeds, MMX will be the first mission to return samples from a moon of Mars.^[12] The launch also lifted the H3's success rate to 80 percent after three consecutive successful flights.^[13] Space Nugget. Phobos and Deimos are small, lumpy moons only tens of kilometres across. Scientists still debate whether they are asteroids captured by Mars' gravity or debris thrown up by a giant impact on the planet, and the chemistry of a returned sample is one of the clearest ways to tell the two apart.