NASA · Friday, October 16, 2026
NASA restates Japan’s Mars-moons launch for Monday
The File desk · Oct 16, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC
Status
Confirmed as NASA’s article dated Oct. 15, 2026. The launch clock is the target NASA prints. The launch has not happened.
- Confirmed
NASA said Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft is targeting launch at 3:41 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Oct. 19, which is 4:41 a.m. on Oct. 20 in Japan, from Tanegashima.
- Confirmed
NASA’s pieces of the mission include the MEGANE instrument, a pneumatic sampler demonstration, Deep Space Network support, and funding for U.S. scientists. NASA says it will curate about 15 percent of the returned sample.
NASA said Thursday that Japan’s mission to the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos is still aimed at a launch Monday at 3:41 p.m. Eastern, from Tanegashima. The spacecraft is supposed to bring a sample of Phobos home. NASA is contributing an instrument, a sampling demonstration, and communications support. The launch has not happened.
The article is dated Oct. 15, 2026. It says the MMX spacecraft is targeting launch from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center at 3:41 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Oct. 19, which is 4:41 a.m. Japan time on Tuesday, Oct. 20.
NASA says the mission is to characterize Phobos and Deimos and to deliver a Phobos sample to Earth. Arrival at Mars is August 2027. Sample collection is no earlier than December 2028. Delivery to Earth is 2031.
NASA’s hardware is the MEGANE spectrograph, built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and the P-Sampler, a pneumatic sampler built by Honeybee Robotics. NASA also provides Deep Space Network support and funding for U.S. scientists on the team. It says it will obtain and curate about 15 percent of the returned sample at Johnson Space Center.
A JAXA release from August had the same Japan-time clock. This article is NASA restating the target two days after a media briefing that had been scheduled for Thursday afternoon. This desk did not open a transcript of that briefing.
What is still unknown or disputed
- The launch can still move. The sentence on the page is a target.
- The Thursday media teleconference transcript was not opened.
- The JAXA English release from Aug. 20 was not re-opened this morning. The Eastern clock in this story is the one NASA printed on Thursday.
Primary sources
Every claim in this story is drawn from the documents below. If a fetch failed, that is recorded on the card.
Source 1
NASA to help unlock mysteries of Mars’ moons in upcoming mission
NASA · October 15, 2026
The MMX spacecraft is targeting launch from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center at 3:41 p.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 19 (4:41 a.m. JST on Tuesday, Oct. 20). NASA contributions include the MEGANE instrument, the P-Sampler, Deep Space Network support, and curation of about 15 percent of the returned sample.
https://science.nasa.gov/directorates/smd/planetary-science-division/nasa-to-help-unlock-mysteries-of-mars-moons-in-upcoming-mission/