The landing of MASCOT on NEA Ryugu
Abstract
After a journey of almost four years aboard JAXA's Hayabusa2 (HY2) spacecraft the MASCOT ('Mobile Asteroid surface SCOuT') asteroid science package is expected to land early October 2018 on the Near-Earth Asteroid (162173) Ryugu. On June 27 this year, the Hayabusa2 project confirmed the successful arrival of the spacecraft at the home position at a distance of 20 km to the surface of the asteroid. Since then the remote instruments (TIR, NIRS3 and ONC) aboard HY2 have retrieved a high amount of data on the shape, gravity, topology, geology and composition of the asteroid. These data are required by the MASCOT team to investigate and determine possible landing sites of MASCOT.
The selected landing site of MASCOT obeys next to the scientific requirements given by its four payloads also to engineering requirements such as no overlap with selected touchdown sites of HY2, good RF link and low thermal influence on the MASCOT system. Since the lander is equipped with primary batteries only, allowing up to 16 hrs of operational lifetime, the final landing site is the result of a careful selection process followed by well-planned autonomous operations. The HY2 spacecraft will descent from its home position 20 km above the asteroid to a very low altitude of about 60 m over Ryugu's surface to deploy MASCOT. Its science activities will already start during the lander's descent phase. After first contact with the asteroid surface MASCOT will bounce several times until it comes to rest. Once MASCOT has detected its orientation and it will autonomously perform a self-right with its mobility mechanism and will start its scientific surface operations. During this phase MASCOT is going to provide scientific data on the surface and physical properties of asteroid Ryugu with its 4 scientific instruments: a wide angle camera with night-time colour illumination (MASCAM), an imaging IR spectrometer microscope (MicrOmega), a multichannel radiometer (MARA), and a magnetometer (MasMAG). After a full measurement sequence of all instruments is completed during one asteroid rotation MASCOT is able to relocate itself on the asteroid surface using its mobility mechanism to perform a new science cycle at a different site. The paper will give an overview on the landing site as well as the landing and on-asteroid operations of MASCOT on the surface of Ruygu.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.P33C3836H
- Keywords:
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- 6040 Origin and evolution;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: COMETS AND SMALL BODIESDE: 6055 Surfaces;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: COMETS AND SMALL BODIESDE: 6205 Asteroids;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTSDE: 6207 Comparative planetology;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS