JAXA is about to perform a Phobos sample return mission

dvh 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I hope they make some photos of Phobos monolith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_monolith

Animats 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nice. These missions that tell us the basics about objects in the Solar System are more useful than, say, re-visiting the moon or Mars.

Venus and Europa could use some attention. Anything underway?

	▲	tagami an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Europa clipper launched 2 years ago arrives in 2030. DAVINCI, a Venusian probe, is slated net 2033
	▲	godshatter an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Apparently five Venus missions (DAVINCI, VERITAS, Envision, Venus Life Finder, and Venus Orbiter) all in the next five years or so: https://www.space.com/astronomy/venus/these-5-venus-missions... For Europa, Europa Clipper Mission (already on the way): https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/mission-time... ... and JUICE (already on the way): https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice There might be others, those are just what I found in a quick search.

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TGower 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

JAXA does great work, they also publish the highest resolution open access global surface elevation model. Really impressive for a country with about 1/10th the GDP of the US.

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hbarka 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder how this mission compares in scale to the JAXA Hayabusa comet interceptor done twenty years ago.