Hayabusa2 Braces for a Rocky Landing on Asteroid Ryugu

Hayabusa2 Braces for a Rocky Landing on Asteroid Ryugu

Hayabusa2 Braces for a Rocky Landing on Asteroid Ryugu







KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - The Japanese ship Hayabusa2 is preparing to land on the asteroid Ryugu, where it will collect a sample of the rocky surface of the asteroid that will finally be sent back to Earth.



	

	After reducing the possible landing sites to Hayabusa2, the mission scientists conducted a sampling test on Wednesday (October 24) at 10:47 p.m. EST (0247 GMT on October 25), and the mission is "to intensify the steps towards a successful landing," said Masaki Fujimoto, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), at a press conference here at the 50th meeting of the American Astronome. Division of the Society for Planetary Sciences (DPS).

		At that time, the spacecraft descended to a height of 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) above the surface of the asteroid and deployed a small target marker at the landing site, Fujimoto said. The spacecraft will go to the surface to retrieve a sample not before January 2019, and that sample will land in Australia in 2020.

The[[Hayabusa2 Asteroid Ryugu of return sample of Japan in pictures]





		[TD1-R3]    It is confirmed that the destination marker (TM) is reflected in the image of the Optical Navigation Camera - Wide Angle (ONC-W1). This image was taken after the TM landed on the surface of Ryugu. The point in the green circle is the TM. Image time: 10/25 11:47 JST, at an altitude of ~ 20 m. pic.twitter.com/Cf4IRKTFfF

		- HAYABUSA2 @ JAXA (@ haya2e_jaxa) October 25, 2018

		The Hayabusa2 mission has already been deployed. two little rovers jumping (MINERVA-II1A and MINERVA-II1B) and a German landing called Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) in Ryugu in the last month. While the MINERVA rovers are still exploring the surface of Ryugu, the mission of MASCOT was short, and ended after only 17 hours and 7 minutes. MASCOT was designed to last only 16 hours on the surface of Ryugu.

		"The focus of the mission now is on the successful recovery and return of a surface sample," the officials of the Planetary Science Institute, which is involved with the Hayabusa2 mission, he said in a statement. To ensure that this phase of the mission is a success, the mission scientists had to choose a landing site that is not only interesting from a scientific perspective, but also safe for the ship, something that proved more difficult than the controllers of the mission. initially expected.

		When Hayabusa2 broke his first detailed images of ryugu In June, scientists were surprised to discover that it is basically a group of debris instead of a smooth and dusty space rock like asteroid Itokawa (which Hayabusa's original mission visited in 2005) and ErosSaid Fujimoto. "That was the moment when we realized that it was not going to be an easy mission," he said, adding that the rocky surface of Ryugu "is not mission friendly."





						


This view of the asteroid Ryugu is the highest resolution image ever taken of an asteroid. Hayabusa2 captured the image with its optical navigation camera on October 15, 2018, from a height of 138 feet (42 meters). 

            						    Credit: JAXA / University of Tokyo / University of Kochi / Rikkyo University / University of Nagoya / Chiba Institute of Technology / Meiji University / University of Aizu / AIST 


		The scientists working on the Hayabusa2 were not prepared for the lack of safe landing sites in Ryugu, because they based their expectations of the asteroid Ryugu on past experience, Fujimoto said. "It is not easy to reveal the stupidity we have been in, but we thought that we had a good experience with Itokawa ... and that there was a smooth surface on the surface, and we thought that it should be ... There might be some rocky part but there should be a part softer and that was the expectation. "

		"This is part of the reason we explore: to see the unexpected, move on, move on and do what we plan to do, return a sample," said Deborah Domingue, a participant scientist at Hayabusa2 at the Planetary Science Institute. At the press conference. "It never satisfies our expectations wherever we go, and that's the emotion, that's the challenge."

		The inhospitable terrain of Ryugu turned out to be problematic when MASCOT entered a bumpy landing on October 2. On his way down, the jumping rover Ralf Jaumann, a principal investigator of the Hayabusa2 mission of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), crashed into a rock and ended up on its head with its instruments pointing into space instead of onto the surface of the asteroid. Fortunately, the rock "was not too hard," Jaumann said, and the mission controllers were able to turn the vehicle over and perform all the investigations as planned.





						


The Hayabusa2 target markers are small white balls about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter. They are covered by a reflective film to make them visible to the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which will use them to navigate during its descent for the return phase of the mission sample.

            						    Credit: JAXA 


		To find possible sampling sites for Hayabusa2, the scientists created topographic models of Ryugu's surface using images of the MINERVA and MASCOT landing modules and searched for the softest areas on the asteroid's surface. "They're almost rocks everywhere," said Lucille Le Corre, another participating scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. "There are not many areas that are smooth."

		In addition to the images, scientists are using the Hayabusa2 thermal infrared camera (TIR) ​​instrument to learn more about the size and other properties of materials on the surface of the asteroid. Specifically, TIR is looking for grains of dust and dirt like those seen on other asteroids and on the moon.

		The Hayabusa2 team began by selecting a square-shaped landing area that measures about 590 feet (180 meters) wide, and has recently reduced it to a circle of about 66 feet (20 m) in diameter. Now, the next step is to work to improve the navigation precision of the ship "so that I can hit the hole in one," Fujimoto said. Because Ryugu is about to pass around the opposite side of the sun, causing Hayabusa2 to temporarily lose contact with the Earth, "that leaves two months for the team to think about the details of touchdown operations."



	Send an email to Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow it @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and in Facebook. Original article about Space.com.

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