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Again, funding from Planetary Society members pushed this test to the finish line. PlanetVac launched from the\u00a0Mojave Air and Space Port, touched down in Mars-like soil, and successfully collected three times more rocks than its original goal. The flight proved that PlanetVac could survive real mission conditions, making it much more likely to launch in the future.<\/p>\n
Now, PlanetVac is finally lifting off. In 2025, the instrument will launch on\u00a0Blue Ghost, a private lunar lander built by Firefly Aerospace and funded by NASA as part of the agency\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Though the mission won\u2019t bring back any samples, it will provide the first true demonstration of PlanetVac in space.An onboard laser and camera will each check that PlanetVac successfully brought samples into the lander. Then, the lunar soil that PlanetVac collected will be sorted into bits of different sizes, just as a future mission might do before taking scientific measurements.<\/p>\n
PlanetVac is also set to fly beyond the Moon. A version of the tool called \u201cP Sampler\u201d will play a key role in the\u00a0Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to bring back samples from Phobos, a moon of Mars. The spacecraft will also use a second sampling system based on a more traditional robotic arm. But since we don\u2019t quite know what the surface of Phobos is like, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which operates the mission, is relying on P Sampler\u2019s flexibility to ensure that the spacecraft will collect samples no matter what.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n