NASA announced Thursday it will fund development of a scientific instrument that will fly on Japan’s Martian Moons Exploration mission, a robotic probe set for launch in 2024 to bring back the first samples from Mars’ largest moon Phobos.
China plans to launch a robotic mission to return samples from the lunar surface, the first such mission in four decades, in November on top of the country’s new heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket, according to state media reports.