Rovers have traversed Mars’s rocky terrain for nearly 30 years, analyzing surface samples to help scientists unravel the Red Planet’s geological history. But its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, remain largely unexplored. That’s finally about to change.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission today at 3:41 p.m. ET. The first-of-its-kind endeavor will send a spacecraft to survey both of Mars’s moons, collect a sample of Phobos, and bring it back to Earth for more extensive analysis. If all goes according to plan, MMX could become the first mission to return home from Mars orbit and the first to return samples from the Martian system.

MMX will launch aboard an H3 rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center. JAXA will begin livestreaming the launch at 2:45 p.m. ET, and you can watch right here.

Many mysteries about the Red Planet remain unsolved, but the question of how Mars got its moons is among the most hotly debated. Scientists are currently divided over whether Phobos and Deimos are ancient asteroids that were ensnared by Mars’s gravity billions of years ago, or the coagulated remains of a massive impact on Mars that blasted material into orbit.

The MMX mission could not only help scientists figure out what these moons are and where they came from, but also provide insight into Mars itself.

“This is not going to be just a Phobos sample return mission,” Kris Zacny, vice president of exploration systems at Honeybee Robotics, which built one of MMX’s sample extractors, recently told Science.

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