Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 14, EPSC2020-247, 2020, updated on 15 May 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-247
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The Martians Moons eXploration (MMX) Rover to Phobos

Naomi Murdoch1, Patrick Michel2, Stephan Ulamec3, Matthias Grott4, Ute Böttger4, Pierre Vernazza5, Denis Arrat6, Maxime Chalon7, Simon Tardivel6, Jens Biele3, Jan Thimo Grundmann8, Hirdy Miyamoto9, and the MMX rover team*
Naomi Murdoch et al.
  • 1ISAE-SUPAERO, DEOS, Toulouse, France (naomi.murdoch@isae.fr)
  • 2Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Lagrange, Nice, France
  • 3Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), 51147 Cologne, Germany
  • 4Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), 12489 Berlin, Germany
  • 5Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), 13388 Marseille, France
  • 6Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), 31401 Toulouse, France
  • 7Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), 82234 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
  • 8Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), 28359 Bremen, Germany
  • 9University of Tokyo, 113-0033 Tokyo, Japan
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, Martians Moons eXploration (MMX) mission will investigate the Martian Moons Phobos and Deimos, and return samples from Phobos to Earth. As part of this mission a small (~25 kg) rover, contributed by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), with additional contributions from INTA (Spain) and JAXA, will be delivered to the surface of Phobos. The rover will demonstrate the technology of locomotion on a regolith-covered, low gravity planetary surface. In addition, the rover will provide scientific data on the regolith properties (mechanical, mineralogical and thermal), provide ground truth for the MMX orbiter instruments, give context information for the returned samples, and contribute to reducing the risk of the landing and sampling operations of the MMX mission.

In order to achieve these goals, the rover has a small suite of scientific instruments: a Raman spectrometer (RAX) to measure the mineralogical composition of the surface material, a radiometer (miniRAD) to measure the surface brightness temperature and determine thermal properties of both regolith and rocks (if in the field of view), a stereo pair of navigation cameras looking forwards (NAVCam) that will place constraints on the level of heterogeneity of the regolith both in terms of composition and space weathering alteration, and two cameras looking at the interface between wheel and surface (WheelCam). The WheelCams will observe the properties of the regolith compaction and flow around the wheels, and the resulting trenches in order to characterise the mechanical properties of the regolith itself.

The MMX rover will be deployed from the main spacecraft from an altitude of less than 100 m above the surface of Phobos. The uprighting and deployment (legs/wheels and solar panels) sequences will be performed automatically once the rover comes to rest on the surface. The rover will then operate for 100 days covering a total distance of several meters to hundreds of meters.

The MMX launch is currently planned for late 2024 with the Mars orbit insertion occurring in 2025, and the rover delivery and operations in 2026 or 2027.

This presentation will provide an overview of the MMX rover and the expected science return from each of the four instruments.

MMX rover team:

All members of the MMX rover engineering and science teams

How to cite: Murdoch, N., Michel, P., Ulamec, S., Grott, M., Böttger, U., Vernazza, P., Arrat, D., Chalon, M., Tardivel, S., Biele, J., Grundmann, J. T., and Miyamoto, H. and the MMX rover team: The Martians Moons eXploration (MMX) Rover to Phobos, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 Sep–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-247, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-247, 2020.