Researchers will use drones and artificial intelligence to observe Mt. Fuji, in preparation for a project to bring back rocks and other materials from the Martian moon of Phobos.
The MMX project led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is scheduled to launch a probe toward Phobos in fiscal 2024. Phobos is about 20 kilometers in diameter, much larger than the 900-meter-wide asteroid Ryugu from which the Hayabusa2 spacecraft brought back rocks in 2020.
To gain a complete picture of the geological features of Phobos, more data is needed than for Ryugu. However, the volume of data that can be sent to Earth is limited.
