At 3:41 p.m. ET today (Oct 19), Japan's H3 rocket lifted off from Tanegashima right on schedule — and a little over an hour later, the MMX spacecraft separated clean and is on its way to Mars' moon Phobos. This morning's launch-day preview ended on a caution: a scheduled launch is a promise, not a result. The promise held. The most powerful variant of Japan's H3 — the H3-24L, flying as flight F10 from the LA-Y2 pad at Tanegashima Space Center — carried JAXA's Martian Moons eX

While NASA's own Mars sample plan sits stranded on the surface, a Japanese spacecraft launching Monday will go to Mars' largest moon, scoop up its soil, and fly it home — with American hardware doing the digging. The most important Mars launch of 2026 will not leave from Texas or Florida. It leaves from an island spaceport in southern Japan — and NASA spends this afternoon explaining why American fingerprints are all over it. At 4 p.m. EDT today, October 15, NASA holds a tele

Mars is not far away on a calendar. It is far away on a schedule — and the schedule only opens about once every 26 months. This month, you can watch it open. Every Mars mission you have ever heard of left Earth inside a narrow band of weeks. Not because launch providers like deadlines, but because the solar system imposes one. Earth circles the Sun in about 365 days; Mars takes about 687. The faster planet keeps lapping the slower one, and the two only line up in the geometry