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Illustration of an artist representing the Japanese spacecraft Mars Moons Exploration (MMX) on the small Phobos Martian satellite.
Credit: JAXA / NASA
The MASCOT lander may be dead, but his lineage will live on and continue to explore the Mars system in a few years.
A rover will be integrated with the Japanese Samples Return Mission of Martian Moons Exploration (MMX), which is scheduled to launch in 2024, Japanese, German and French space officials announced on Wednesday (October 3rd). .
Like MASCOT, which explored the asteroid Ryugu for 17 hours this week, the new robot will be built by the German aerospace center, known by its German acronym DLR, in collaboration with the French space agency, CNES. [Japan’s Hayabusa2 Asteroid Ryugu Mission in Pictures]
MMX aims to return a sample of Phobos Mars Moon 14 km wide (22 km) to Earth in 2029. The recently announced rover will facilitate this work and will also collect important data.
"The rover needs to analyze the regolith and the surface configuration in detail in order to optimize the operations of landing and returning samples of the MMX," Wednesday (Oct. 3) officials said. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), DLR and CNES. ).
"This process should not only reduce the risks associated with the mission, but also produce a scientific result, as the mobile acquires surface data before the return of the physical sample to Earth," added the officials.
The main goal of the MMX mission is to determine the origin of Phobos and Deimos, the other moon of Mars, which is also small. Scientists do not know where the two moons come from; Some think that they are captured asteroids, for example, while others think that they are composed of materials extracted from the red planet by a powerful impact.
Space officials specifically cited MASCOT (which stands for "Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout") in their statement, saying the recently announced robot "will follow" the asteroid's hopper. But the MMX robot will not be a clone of MASCOT.
For example, the Phobos surface vessel will operate at solar energy, which will allow it to operate for several months on the crater surface of the satellite. MASCOT, on the other hand, relied on a non-rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
Artist illustration of the rebound touchdown of the MASCOT undercarriage on the big asteroid Ryugu, October 2, 2018.
Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0)
And the statement qualifies MASCOT of LG but repeatedly refers to the new robot as a mobile, suggesting that there could be significant differences in the way (or frequency) of movement of the two robots. (That being said, it is likely that the Phobos bot will also jump, given the low-density environment of the Martian moon.)
MASCOT went to Ryugu aboard the $ 150 million Hayabusa2 mission, led by JAXA. The parent ship Hayabusa2 also deployed last month two tiny solar-powered hoppers, called MINERVA-II1A and MINERVA-II1b. these little guys are still active on Ryugu's surface today.
Hayabusa2 is also a mission of return of samples. If all goes according to plan, the Ryugu equipment hooked by the mothership will return to Earth in December 2020.
Mike Wall's book on the quest for extra-terrestrial life, "Out There," will be released on November 13th. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally posted on Space.com.
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