‘Once-in-a-lifetime chance’: Japan launches historic mission to collect rocks from Mars’s moon Phobos
Japan’s space agency has begun a pioneering mission to retrieve samples from Phobos, one of Mars’s moons. The spacecraft, launched earlier this year, will land on the moon’s surface, collect rock material and return it to Earth for analysis. Researchers aim to use the samples to better understand the formation of the solar system and the potential origins of life.