Mars’ Moons Reveal Planetary Collisions: MMX Mission Uncovers Cosmic Violence and Indigenous Cosmological Parallels
Original framing: “How did Mars get its moons? Japan’s MMX space mission aims to solve the puzzle” — The Conversation - Global
Indigenous cosmologies, such as the Māori *whakapapa* or the Navajo *Diné Bahane’* (Emergence Stories), frame celestial bodies as ancestral and relational, not inert objects for study. These traditions often describe celestial conflicts (e.g., the Navajo *Yee Naaldlooshii* battling monsters to shape the world) as metaphors for cosmic violence—parallels to the MMX mission’s focus on Phobos’ potential origin from a Mars collision. The mission’s framing ignores how Indigenous astronomers, like the Polynesian navigators who mapped stars for wayfinding, treated celestial bodies as guides and kin, not specimens. This omission reinforces the colonial erasure of non-Western ways of knowing space.
The MMX mission’s study of Phobos is not just a scientific endeavor but a microcosm of deeper systemic tensions: between colonial extraction and relational cosmologies, between geopolitical competition and planetary survival, and between Western scientific authority and Indigenous knowledge systems.
Historical parallels—from the Apollo program’s Cold War roots to the *Moon Agreement*’s failures—reveal how ‘discovery’ has long masked strategic and economic interests, while marginalized voices expose the mission’s complicity in perpetuating inequities. A trickster lens cuts through the solemnity of space science to ask: *Who benefits from framing Phobos as a puzzle to solve?* The answer lies in the power structures that shape which questions get asked—and whose knowledge gets erased. To move forward, solutions must center Indigenous governance, reallocate space budgets toward Earth’s crises, and decolonize the narrative of exploration itself, ensuring that the cosmos is studied not as a resource to exploit, but as a living system to understand and protect.