Idefix is a rover developed by the French space agency CNES and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in cooperation with the Japanese space agency JAXA for the planned Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to Phobos, a moon of Mars. The rover is designed to land on Phobos and explore its surface before the MMX spacecraft lands on the moon and collects samples for return to Earth. MMX is scheduled to launch in 2026. Idefix is a ~23 kg, solar-powered rover carrying a suite of instruments for surface and regolith investigations: the RAman spectrometer for MMX (RAX), a miniaturized infrared radiometer (miniRAD), and imaging systems that include a pair of navigation cameras and two downward-facing WheelCams to observe wheel–soil interactions at close range. The rover is a Franco–German development in cooperation with JAXA—DLR providing the structure, locomotion and thermal instruments, and CNES providing cameras, avionics, power, and communications—and is designed for at least 100 days of operations on Phobos. Deployment is planned after roughly 18 months of Phobos observations by the MMX spacecraft. The orbiter will release Idefix from about 40–100 m altitude into a ~100 m landing footprint; after autonomous uprighting and solar-array deployment, the rover will traverse at millimetre-per-second speeds to characterize local terrain, support landing-site assessment, and inform MMX sampling activities. Operations will be shared between control centers in Toulouse and Cologne, with all commands and telemetry relayed via the MMX spacecraft. The name Idefix, honoring the dog from the Asterix comics, was announced at the 2023 Paris Air Show.
Name
The rover is named after Idéfix, the French name for Dogmatix, Obelix's dog in the French comic Asterix. The name Idefix is also used for the character in the German translation. Besides its native France the Asterix series has been particularly successful in Germany — out of 350 million comic books sold worldwide by 2013, 130 million were in the French original while 120 million were in German. The name was chosen at 2023 Paris Air Show to connect it with the first French satellite, Asterix.
Operations Idefix is a joint Franco-German project. German DLR developed the rover structure, locomotion system, connectors to the MMX spacecraft, and both spectrometer and radiometer. French CNES developed the cameras, computer, power and communication systems. The rover will be operated from two centers in Toulouse, France, and in Cologne, Germany. Two control centers will alternate the rover operations: during the cruise phase, centers will alternate execution of flight events, whereas during surface operations on Phobos, centers will function in parallel with weekly role exchanges, one serving as prime center executing current operations while the other functions as secondary center planning subsequent seven-day activity sequences. Communication architecture routes all rover commands and telemetry through the MMX spacecraft and JAXA's Sagamihara ground segment; direct Earth-rover transmission is impossible. Spacecraft-rover contact will occur twice per Earth day. The rover was assembled and tested in Toulouse, France. In 2024, the rover was sent from Europe to Japan for integration with the MMX spacecraft. Because of Phobos's low gravity, which is almost two thousand times lower than Earth's, it is impossible to test the rover properly with a flight spare, as was done with NASA's Mars rovers: "a rover two thousand times lighter than the MMX rover would have to be used for a representative test". A simulation model was created to address this issue, which allows researchers to study the rover's behaviour. The rover weighs 23.47 kg, of which scientific instruments – cameras, a radiometer, and a Raman spectrometer – weigh 2.44 kg. The rover's body is a rectangle of 231 by 376 by 415 millimetres, with 4 solar panels of 415 by 363 millimetres (total area 0.36 square meters) which should produce "at least 60 watt-hours per Phobos day (7h)". The rover is expected to operate for 100 days. Its expected speed is 1 mm per second. The rover deployment from the main spacecraft will occur only after 18 months of Phobos observations: the moon is poorly studied, and the landing site will be selected during the mission; landing is expected in 2029. Both Idefix and MMX will land in one area of about 300 × 300 m. Idefix will land first, and will assist the MMX team scouting the area. The landing zone of the rover is about 100 m in diameter, while MMX has smaller landing zone of about 20 x 20 m. The rover will be deployed to the surface of Phobos from the main spacecraft from an altitude of 40 to 100 metres, similar to the MASCOT deployment from Hayabusa2 to an asteroid. Idefix can experience a "bouncing phase" during landing. The landing zones of the two spacecraft must be separated, so that the MMX landing won't interfere with the rover and won't damage its solar panels. After landing, the rover will execute the program to reorient itself using its wheels, and deploy its solar panels. Failure to do so will be a failure of the mission, as rover must generate enough power to warm its computer and instruments. Phobos's regolith and surface are poorly understood due to a lack of dedicated spacecraft mission, most observations of the moon were done by various Mars orbiters. The rover's objectives are to touch the surface of Phobos, to check the behaviour of the surface under mechanical actions and to relay this information to Earth. It must also demonstrate that it is possible to use wheeled locomotion on a body with such low gravity. Main rover tasks:
Close-up and high-resolution imaging of the surface terrain. Regolith science (e.g., geometrical properties like grain size and shape distributions; mechanical properties like surface strength; dynamical properties linked to how the regolith flows). Measurements of the mineralogical composition of the surface material (by Raman spectroscopy). Determination of the thermal properties of the surface material (surface temperature, emissivity, thermal conductivity, layering).
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