Japan's MMX Probe Launches Monday, October 19, to Bring Home a Piece of Mars's Moon Phobos

Updated: October 20, 2026, 8:36 AM ET · Sky desk

Japan's Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft, MMX, is scheduled to lift off on Monday, October 19, at 3:41 p.m. Eastern (4:41 a.m. Tuesday in Japan) from the Tanegashima Space Center, bound for Mars's two small moons, Phobos and Deimos. It will be the first mission to orbit Phobos, the first to land a rover on it, and the first to bring part of a Martian moon back to Earth, with the sample capsule due home in 2031. NASA built two of the instruments and will curate 15 percent of what comes back.

What is launching

MMX rides an H3 rocket, Japan's newest launcher, on its tenth flight, according to the mission page of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). After about a year in transit, the spacecraft is expected to enter orbit around Mars in August 2027 and then settle into a so-called quasi-satellite orbit around Phobos the following month, according to the European Space Agency, one of five partners alongside JAXA, NASA, France's CNES and Germany's DLR. From there it will map the moon for roughly three years before touching down twice to scoop up at least 10 grams of surface material, according to JAXA. NASA's October 15 release lists the sample collection as "no earlier than December 2028," with the return capsule landing in Australia in 2031.

The United States is on board in several ways. NASA's announcement names the MEGANE spectrograph, built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which will read gamma rays and neutrons from Phobos to work out what it is made of, and a pneumatic sampler from Honeybee Robotics that fires bursts of nitrogen gas to collect loose grains. NASA's Deep Space Network will track the probe, and 15 percent of the returned material will go to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Nicky Fox, who leads NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said the samples will bring "paradigm-shifting science on the Mars system."

Riding along is a small rover named Idefix, designed and built by CNES with DLR, according to the French space agency. It weighs 25 kilograms on Earth; on Phobos, where gravity is a tiny fraction of ours, ESA says it would weigh about 15 grams. Its job, from early 2029, is to test the ground before the main spacecraft lands.

Fear and Dread, up close

Phobos and Deimos were discovered in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington and named for the twin sons of Ares in Greek myth, Fear and Dread, who rode into battle beside the war god. Nobody knows where they came from. Tom Statler, NASA's program scientist for MMX, said in the agency's release that the moons "may be the remains of a massive impact on Mars"; the competing idea is that they are asteroids captured by Mars's gravity. The grains MMX brings home should settle the question, and because Phobos orbits so low, they may also carry dust blasted off Mars itself over billions of years.

A launch window to Mars opens only every 26 months, which is why Monday's date matters. CNES will stream a roundtable from Toulouse before liftoff, and ESA has said it will confirm the launch on October 20. If the weather or the rocket slips, JAXA will announce a new date.

What it means spiritually

Facts first: this is a robotic science mission with a schedule and a budget, and nothing about it changes the night sky you will see this week. Everything below is interpretation.

Astrologers have worked with Mars for thousands of years without ever touching it. On launch day the planet sits near 12 degrees of Leo in the tropical zodiac, by our calculation from the JPL planetary ephemeris, deep in the sign of the heart and of courage; the Sun crosses into Scorpio, the sign Mars ruled before Pluto was discovered, four days later on October 23. There is something fitting in a mission of patience aimed at the planet of impatience: five years of waiting for a handful of dust. In the old language, Mars is the drive that gets things started and the heat that burns out early. MMX is the other side of that planet, the discipline of a long campaign.

And then there are the moons' names. Fear and Dread were not villains in the myth; they were the companions a warrior could not go into battle without. To fly to them, map them, and bring a piece home is a very literal version of what Mars work asks of anyone: go toward the thing you are afraid of, slowly, and come back with something you can hold. If you keep a planetary week, Tuesday, Mars's day, is the natural time to sit with that.

What you can do now

• Watch the launch live. Liftoff is targeted for Monday, October 19, at 3:41 p.m. ET (12:41 p.m. PT). JAXA streams its launches; CNES streams a roundtable from Toulouse beforehand.
• Find Mars in the morning sky. The planet is currently in Leo and rises before dawn; a sky app or the monthly planet guide will show you where to look.
• Mark Tuesday. In the planetary week Tuesday belongs to Mars. Our guide to planetary incense by weekday explains how the seven-day cycle is used.
• Know your own Mars. Where Mars sits in your chart says how you start things and how you fight; our guide to the Mars sign walks through all twelve.
• Put 2027 in your calendar. Mars turns retrograde next year; the dates and shadow periods are in our Mars retrograde 2027 guide. By then MMX should be arriving at Mars.

Pairs well with: Sagrada Madre Mars Cosmos Incense, red-fruit and palo santo sticks made for Tuesday and for Mars work.

Sources

• NASA, "NASA to Help Unlock Mysteries of Mars' Moons in Upcoming Mission," October 15, 2026. science.nasa.gov
• JAXA, Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission site: launch October 20, 2026, 4:41:03 a.m. JST on H3 flight 10; 10 g sample; capsule recovery in Australia in 2031. mmx.jaxa.jp
• ESA, "Mars moon lander set to launch on 19 October," October 13, 2026. esa.int
• CNES, "Launch of the MMX probe to the moons of Mars," event page (Idefix rover designed and built by CNES with DLR). cnes.fr
• Mars's position (about 12° Leo, tropical, October 19, 2026) computed by the editors from NASA JPL ephemeris DE421 using the Skyfield library.
• Questions about an order or a product: 28@templeofdesire.com

Cover image: a spacecraft above a cratered moon with Mars behind it, generated by Temple of Desire to illustrate the story; it is not a photograph of MMX. The spiritual readings in this article are tradition and lived practice, not scientifically proven.