In the ancient human habit of reaching toward the unknown, Japan prepares to send its MMX spacecraft toward the moons of Mars — those small, enigmatic bodies whose very origins remain disputed — in search of materials that may illuminate how the Solar System was assembled and how life first found its footing. Launching from Tanegashima and targeting a landing on Phobos, the mission carries with it not only scientific instruments but a civilizational question: where did the building blocks of existence come from, and how did they arrive at our doorstep? The answer, encoded in a few grams of anc