The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced an agreement with Japanese public broadcaster NHK for its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, which is due to launch in 2024. The partnership plans to develop a "Super Hi-Vision" camera that will be capable of filming 8K images of Mars and its moons from space.
The goal of the project is to provide the most detailed images of the voyage by the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) probe, which will take it some 300 million kilometers from the planet Earth. In the course of its mission, the robotic spacecraft will conduct studies of Mars and its two natural satellites, Phobos and Deimos. It will also land once or twice to collect samples from Phobos, which it will bring back to Earth in 2029 if everything goes according to plan.
The camera to be developed by JAXA and NHK will produce ultra-high definition images, with a resolution of 7680x4320 pixels, which should reveal new details of the Red Planet. Taken at regular intervals, the images will be transmitted to JAXA, and at the same time kept along with samples collected by the mission in the probe's capsule, which is due to return to Earth five years following its launch.
A video on the Martian Moons eXploration mission: youtu.be/Wt0l7yGzQ5s
