JAXA's MMX is set to launch on an H3 rocket on 19 October and return at least ten grams of Phobos material to Earth in 2031, according to ESA. The sample is meant to help decide whether Mars's moons are captured asteroids or giant-impact debris.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 45%
- Operator
- Operator 33%
- Investor
- Investor 22%
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives55
- Confidence72
Stickney Crater's age splits Phobos' two origin stories by 1.6 billion years
Work presented at the European Geosciences Union assembly in Vienna models whether compressed rock sits beneath Phobos' largest crater, part of an effort to read the little moon's interior before Japan's MMX mission goes there to sample it.
Reality
- Evidence52
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives35
- Confidence45
Phobos atlas maps where loose regolith ends up before MMX collects its 10 grams
Isabel Herreros and Sebastien Charnoz have modelled how self-gravity, Martian tides and rotation move loose material across Phobos, because on a moon that small a downhill slope does not predict which way regolith goes.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives30
- Confidence55
One 320-metre impact explains Deimos's dust blanket, and predicts what a sampler would grab
About a hundred SPH runs at the University of Bern converge on a single non-destructive strike as the source of Deimos's south-polar depression and its global regolith. The surface is ejecta, and it is weak.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption34
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives58
- Confidence55
Bennu closed the nucleobase question. Six amino acids are still unaccounted for.
A Live Science tally puts the off-Earth inventory at all five DNA and RNA nucleobases and 14 of 20 biological amino acids. The gaps are now the interesting part.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption52
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives30
- Confidence45