Why an upcoming mission to Phobos may reveal something spectacular.
Both NASA and the European Space Agency are operating or planning major missions to — and back from — the Red Planet in a hunt for signs the once wet planet also hosted microbial life forms.
But it’s possible the best place to look for life on Mars isn’t on Mars at all.
In a new perspective published Thursday in the journal Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) scientists Ryuki Hyodo and Tomohiro Usui explain why JAXA believes the Martian moon Phobos could provide a unique opportunity to assess whether Mars ever contained life, and how the space agency’s upcoming Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission plans to test that hypothesis in 2024.
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