Our first “MMX Conference”

The first MMX Conference was held at JAXA ISAS over four days from November 12 – 15, 2024. Those familiar with MMX might be asking, “What’s this? Wasn’t the last MMX meeting in April number nine?”. This sharp observation would be absolutely true! Until now, the MMX Project have held nine “MMX System Design Meetings”. These have been accompanied by separate meetings for subcommittees and working groups. But with an eye on the MMX launch in 2026, we need a way to easily exchange ideas and opinions amongst all the teams, so it was decided to combine multiple meetings into a new meeting series. This was our first MMX Conference!

The MMX Conference was held as a hybrid meeting, with approximately 50 people joining on-site from Japan and overseas, and a further 90 people participating online. This time we hosted about 20 attendees on-site from overseas, coming from institutions including NASA, JHU/APL¹, CNES and DLR. The meeting had the following structure:

Day 1: Project General Meeting
Day 2: Ground System General Meeting
Day 3: Mission Instruments Team Meeting
Day 4: Operations General Meeting

At the General Project Meeting on the first day, Project Manager Kawakatsu Yasuhiro reported on the overall project status. He was followed by Mitsubishi Electric’s Uehara Akinari, who discussed the future development schedule and the plans for the comprehensive spacecraft system tests. Yaji Kentaro from MMX Public Relations reported on the recent science conference that was held in Paris from November 4 – 6, as well as recent activities at the Sagamihara Special Open Campus Day, and the MMX session at Japan’s Space Science and Technology Conference (Ukaren).

From the second day onwards, the conversations heated up, with questions flying around on topics such as the future ground test plans, and operation plans once we reach the Martian sphere! This was a big advantage to having the meeting all together, with many people attending together both in person and online. Our overseas team members also remarked that it was a great opportunity to share information from all areas of the mission throughout the four days. 

The next MMX meeting is scheduled to be held in June this year.

(A version of this article also appeared in the December edition of “ISAS News”.)

1. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory ↩︎