Japan's MMX lifts off — humanity's first trip to bring home pieces of a Martian moon

Just after 3:40 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, an H3 rocket rose from Tanegashima Space Center carrying Japan's Martian Moons Exploration mission — MMX — toward Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons. If all goes well, MMX will be the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Phobos, land, collect samples and bring them back to Earth. The samples could settle a long argument: are Phobos and its sibling Deimos captured asteroids, or debris blasted off Mars by an ancient collision? The mission is led by Japan's space agency JAXA with NASA, France's CNES and the European Space Agency, and a small European rover is set to scout the landing site first.

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