Phobos (moon) was proposed to place an orbiter in Mars orbit by 2021 to study Phobos and Deimos through a series of close flybys. The mission is called Phobos And Deimos & Mars Environment (PADME). Two other Phobos missions that were proposed for the Discovery 13 selection included a mission called "Merlin", which would flyby Deimos but actually orbit and land on Phobos, and another one is "Pandora" which would orbit both Deimos and Phobos. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled in 9 June 2015 the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX), a sample return mission targeting Phobos. MMX will land and collect
Phobos monolith astronaut Buzz Aldrin has spoken about the Phobos monolith and his support for a mission to Phobos. The object appears in Mars Global Surveyor images SPS252603 and SPS255103, dated 1998. The object is unrelated to another monolith located on the surface of Mars, which NASA noted as an example of a common surface feature in that region. Phobos monolith The Phobos monolith is a large rock on the surface of Mars's moon Phobos. It is a boulder about across and tall. A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive piece of rock. Monoliths also occur naturally on