Authors: Patrick Michel, Stephan Ulamec, Ute Böttger, Matthias Grott, Naomi Murdoch, Pierre Vernazza, Cecily Sunday, Yun Zhang, Rudy Valette, Romain Castellani, Jens Biele, Simon Tardivel, Olivier Groussin, Laurent Jorda, Jörg Knollenberg, Jan Thimo Grundmann, Denis Arrat, Gabriel Pont, Stephane Mary, Markus Grebenstein, Hirdy Miyamoto, Tomoki Nakamura, Koji Wada, Kent Yoshikawa, Kiyoshi Kuramoto

Venue: Earth, Planets and Space

Type: Publication

Abstract: AbstractThe Japanese MMX sample return mission to Phobos by JAXA will carry a rover developed by CNES and DLR that will be deployed on Phobos to perform in situ analysis of the Martian moon’s surface properties. Past images of the surface of Phobos show that it is covered by a layer of regolith. However, the mechanical and compositional properties of this regolith are poorly constrained. In particular, from current remote images, very little is known regarding the particle sizes, their chemical composition, the packing density of the regolith... (read more)

DOI: 10.1186/s40623-021-01464-7