The next giant leap for humanity: landing on a moon of Mars

JAXA, being the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, last week launched a probe towards Mars, with the ambitious aim of landing on Phobos, one of the red planet’s moons. The probe, called the Martian Moons eXploration mission (MMX), will collect samples from Phobos’s surface, and return them to Earth for study. The whole mission is expected to take five years. Astronomers have long wondered if Phobos, and no doubt Deimos, Mars’ other moon, are asteroids captured billions of years ago. That seems like a reasonable assertion, given the solar system’s asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter. If it can be ascertained the “moons” are asteroids snared by the fourth planet, perhaps then we could give thought to demoting both satellites to the status of captured object, rather than moon. If Pluto can be reduced to dwarf planet status, the same ought to apply to moons, or so-called moons, unless they adhere to a certain criteria in terms of size and shape, among other things. I’m not…