Japan has begun a five-year bid to pull off a world first: bringing rock and dust back from Mars' moon Phobos, in the hope that at least 10 grams of material could help rewrite what we know about the early solar system.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft, or MMX, lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan before dawn on Tuesday, 20 October, aboard an H3 rocket.
