The Japanese MMX mission is being primed to depart at the end of the year, taking a small French-German rover named Idefix® along for the ride. With final pre-launch testing now nearing completion, CNES teams on site in Japan have been busy performing the unusual operation of inserting an SD card inside Idefix® containing messages from Earthlings.

It was the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that came up with the idea to leave messages from our blue planet on Phobos, Mars’ unexplored moon. Several thousand messages have been collected and recorded from all over the globe, taking up 70 Mb on the tiny card. They will stay with Idefix® on Phobos for the attention of future explorers…

Idefix® to scout Phobos

Developed jointly by the German space agency DLR and CNES, Idefix® is set to play a crucial role in the mission once deployed to the surface of Phobos. It will explore this very-low-gravity environment and study the moon’s surface properties, delivering valuable science data for the Japanese probe to plan collection of samples and return them to Earth.