hayabusa2 mission parts for sale

TOKYO/MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Japan has retrieved a capsule of asteroid dust from Australia’s remote outback after a six-year mission that may help uncover more about the origins of the planets and water, the Asian nation’s space agency said on Sunday.

The mission of the Japanese spacecraft, Hayabusa2, spotlights Asia’s growing role in space exploration, with a Chinese robotic vehicle collecting lunar samples last week for the first time since the 1970s.

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft"s Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) will land at a site in the asteroid Ryugu"s southern hemisphere dubbed MA-9, mission officials announced today (Aug. 23).

MA-9 won out over nine other finalists because it offered the best combination of scientific potential and accessibility, MASCOT team members said. [Japan"s Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample-Return Mission in Pictures]

MA-9 features relatively fresh, pristine surface material that hasn"t been exposed to cosmic radiation for long compared to other parts of the 3,000-foot-wide (950 meters) asteroid, team members said. And Hayabusa2 will drop three small rovers onto patches of the space rock"s northern hemisphere, so a southern site for the 22-lb. (10 kilograms) MASCOT will give the mission greater coverage of the space rock, they added.

The $150 million Hayabusa2 mission launched in December 2014 and arrived at Ryugu on June 27 of this year. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will study the big asteroid from orbit for another 16 months and also drop down several times to grab samples of Ryugu material.

Meanwhile, MASCOT and the three tiny, hopping rovers — known as Minerva-II-1a, Minerva-II-1b and Minerva-II-2 — will gather a variety of information about the asteroid from its surface. (Minerva-I flew aboard Japan"s first asteroid-sampling mission, the original Hayabusa, which returned grains from the space rock Itokawa to Earth in 2010.)

Hayabusa2 isn"t the only asteroid-sampling project underway. NASA"s $800 million OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) mission is on its final approach toward the asteroid Bennu, and should arrive in orbit around the 1,650-foot-wide (500 m) rock this December. OSIRIS-REx"s samples are due to land on Earth in September 2023.

Both Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx aim to help scientists better understand asteroid composition and structure, the early history and evolution of the solar system, and the role space rocks may have played in helping life get a start on Earth.

Bringing pristine samples of asteroid material back to Earth will allow researchers to tackle such questions efficiently and effectively, team members from both missions have said. Scientists can perform many more experiments and investigations using well-equipped labs around the world than a robotic probe could conduct all by itself in deep space.

Japan"s Hayabusa2 mission is headed home from an asteroid called Ryugu, carrying a very special delivery of space rock, but Earth may not be the spacecraft"s final destination.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which runs the mission, is evaluating a second stop for its space-rock investigation, according to recent statements. Such a mission extension, which would last more than a decade, could see Hayabusa2 orbit a second asteroid.

The opportunity for extension comes from a combination of two factors: the spacecraft"s engine still holds about half its fuel and it doesn"t need to land on Earth to complete the sample-return piece of its agenda. Instead, the mission"s main spacecraft will deploy a small capsule packed with asteroid chunks that will tumble through Earth"s atmosphere and land in the Australian Outback on Dec. 6.

When JAXA engineers ran the numbers, they realized that Hayabusa2"s main spacecraft could send that capsule on its way and still be poised for more adventures. The spacecraft would need to stay in the inner solar system to draw enough solar power, but the team calculated that the spacecraft will has enough fuel to visit one of 354 different destinations, according to a JAXA statement, including Venus, Mars, nearby comets and a host of asteroids.

Mission personnel have already narrowed down the spacecraft"s potential second target to just two candidates, both tiny space rocks with designations rather than proper names. These objects are near-Earth asteroids, like Ryugu itself, but each is just one tenth as wide as Hayabusa2"s first destination.

Despite their tiny size, both candidates are scientifically intriguing, according to JAXA, and Hayabusa2 would be able to slip into orbit around either one, rather than simply fly by, making the little asteroids even more intriguing targets.

Of course, planning orbital operations presume that the spacecraft remains in good health long enough to rendezvous with these objects, and that"s a big if. Hayabusa2 was only designed to withstand its initial six-year mission, not an extra decade in the harsh environment of space. But for JAXA, there"s little risk in trying beyond the cost of continuing to operate the spacecraft, that is.

In the case of either potential target, Hayabusa2 would need to make a long and winding journey, skimping on fuel and instead relying on gravitational boosts from flying by Earth, Venus or another asteroid to drive the probe to its destination, arriving only in 2029 or 2031, depending which object wins out.

That said, the spacecraft would be able to do science long before it reached its new target. Hayabusa2 could study the zodiacal light that reflects off interplanetary dust and look for exoplanets during quiet parts of its cruise, according to JAXA. It could study the moon during flyby maneuvers it would need to conduct around Earth to meet its target. And, depending on the final destination, the spacecraft would also need to swing past either Venus or another asteroid, offering another observation opportunity.

Then, of course, there are the asteroid destinations themselves. The two contenders are called 2001 AV43 and 1998 KY26, using the typical number-letter designations assigned to asteroids at their discovery. Both are near-Earth objects, like Ryugu and like Bennu, which NASA"s sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx is currently orbiting, and each orbits the sun once every 500 or so days, according to NASA"s database of such objects.

As with all asteroid missions, Hayabusa2"s potential second stop is balancing two different goals. There"s a degree to which scientists study these space rocks just to learn about the solar system. But there"s also a degree of existential angst to the work. After all, near-Earth asteroids can become a-little-too-near-Earth asteroids. While our atmosphere protects us from many of these space rocks, some make it through to cause damage at Earth"s surface.

The most recent sizable asteroid impact, which burst into pieces over Chelyabinsk, Russia, was triggered by an asteroid likely about half the size of Hayabusa2"s two potential targets, which are likely about the same size as the object that caused the Tunguska event in 1908. The more that scientists can learn about such objects in their natural environment, the better humans can prepare to defend themselves if an asteroid comes a bit too close for comfort.

JAXA will decide which target is more promising this fall, then wait for budgetary support before determining whether Hayabusa2 will make its extra stop.

Japan’s mission to bring asteroid dust back to Earth has succeeded. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed on 14 December that a capsule from spacecraft Hayabusa2, which landed in an Australian desert last week, contained black grains from asteroid Ryugu.

“The confirmation of sample is a very important milestone for us and for JAXA,” says Yuichi Tsuda, project manager for the mission at JAXA, in Sagamihara.

“Images that Hayabusa2 took during its landing operations made us confident that the spacecraft collected Ryugu samples,” wrote Satoru Nakazawa, deputy manager of the mission, in an e-mail while in Woomera, Australia. But the team couldn’t know for sure until they disassembled the capsule and saw the dark dust.

Once the capsule is fully unsealed, possibly later today, JAXA scientists will measure the material’s mass and study its composition and structure. They hope to have collected at least 0.1 grams of material, says Yoshikawa Makoto, mission manager for Hayabusa2 at JAXA.

Hayabusa2 collected the samples over a year and a half of poking and prodding Ryugu—a small asteroid shaped like a squashed sphere, peppered with giant boulders. Ryugu is a C-type, or carbon-rich, asteroid, which scientists think contains organic and hydrated minerals preserved from as far back as 4.6 billion years ago. The samples could help to explain how Earth became covered with water. Scientists think it came on asteroids or similar planetary bodies from the outer regions of the Solar System.

Hayabusa2 has now begun its 11-year journey to its next destination: a fast-rotating asteroid known as 1998 KY26. To reach it, the spacecraft will fly by another asteroid—2001 CC21—and swing past Earth another two times.

Scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) observing the landing from a control room on the southern island of Tanegashima applauded and made “V” for victory signs after the Hayabusa2 probe landed on the asteroid on Thursday morning local time.

Its landing is the second time the probe has touched down on the desolate asteroid as part of a complex mission that has also involved sending rovers and robots.[PPTD] July 11 at 10:51 JST: Gate 5 check. The state of the spacecraft is normal and the touchdown sequence was performed as scheduled. Project Manager Tsuda has declared that the 2nd touchdown was a success!— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) July 11, 2019

The mission hopes to collect pristine materials from beneath the surface of the asteroid that could provide insights into what the solar system was like at its birth 4.6bn years ago. The agency said it would be the first time a probe has taken particles from below the surface of an asteroid.

To get at those crucial materials, in April an “impactor” was fired from Hayabusa2 towards Ryugu in a risky process that created a crater on the asteroid’s surface and stirred up material that had not previously been exposed to the atmosphere.

“This is the second touchdown, but doing a touchdown is a challenge whether it’s the first or the second,” Yuichi Tsuda, Hayabusa2 project manager, told reporters ahead of the mission.

Hayabusa2’s first touchdown was in February, when it landed briefly on Ryugu and fired 5g pellet at more than 1,050km per hour (650mph) into the asteroid’s surface to puff up dust for collection, before blasting back to its holding position.

During its brief time on the asteroid, Hayabusa2 collected samples from the crater formed in February via a tube that retrieved the unidentified “ejecta” as it floated up.

A photo of the crater taken by Hayabusa2’s camera showed that parts of the asteroid’s surface are covered with materials that are “obviously different” from the rest of the surface, mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa told reporters. “I’m really looking forward to analysing these materials.”

At about the size of a large refrigerator and powered by solar panels, Hayabusa2 is the successor to Jaxa’s first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa – Japanese for falcon.

Hayabusa2’s photos of Ryugu, which means “Dragon Palace” in Japanese and refers to a castle at the bottom of the ocean in an ancient Japanese tale, show the asteroid has a rough surface full of boulders.

The Hayabusa2 mission was launched in December 2014 at a cost of around 30bn yen ($270m). It reached its stationary position above Ryugu in June last year after travelling 3.2bn km on an elliptical orbit around the sun for more than three years, according to Kyodo news agency.

This asteroid mission is the sequel to the Hayabusa spacecraft, designed for returning asteroid samples. By investigating a different type of asteroid (type C) from the Itokawa asteroid (type S) that was the target of Hayabusa, Hayabusa2 will explore not only the origins of the planets, but also the origin of the water of Earth’s oceans and the source of life.

Hayabusa2 primarily followed the sample return method performed by the first Hayabusa mission. However, a series of improvement were implemented to increase reliability so that the mission was able to obtain greater accuracy and reliability. The mission also took on additional challenges using new technology, such as that for creating an artificial crater on the asteroid surface and collecting a sample of the subsurface material. Improving spacecraft technology for exploring astronomical objects within the Solar System is an important goal for the Hayabusa2 mission.

Hayabusa2 examined asteroid (162173) Ryugu. Ryugu is a type C asteroid and it is believed that the composition of such asteroids still include organic matter and water from when the Solar System was forming, roughly 4.6 billion years ago. The second goal of the Hayabusa2 mission is to investigate questions regarding the origin of the Earth’s water and where the organic matter that forms life originally came from. Another aspect of the mission is to examine how the planets formed through the collision, destruction, and combination of planetesimals, which are thought to have been formed early in the Solar System. In short, Hayabusa2 is a mission designed to elucidate the creation of life and the birth of the Solar System.

Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu on June 27, 2018, collected samples from the asteroid during two touchdowns in 2019, and delivered the sample capsule back to the Earth on December 6, 2020. After delivering the capsule, the spacecraft continued on to a new mission. This new phase is referred to as the “Extended Mission”, with a new target destination of the small asteroid, 1998 KY26. This is a long-term mission whose duration exceeds 10 years over which there is an itinerary of events followed by the rendezvous with the rapidly rotating 1998 KY26.

After returning to the Earth in December 2020, Hayabusa2 separated the sample capsule and left for a new journey into deep space. The Extended Mission will use the remaining ion engine fuel (Xenon), of which about half currently remains. The next target destination is asteroid 1998 KY26 and arrival is scheduled for 2031. During the journey, a flyby is planned of asteroid 2001 CC21 in 2026, and two Earth swing-bys in 2027 and 2028.

The final destination for the Extended Mission, 1998 KY26, is a very small object with a diameter of several tens of meters. The asteroid is part of a class referred to as fast rotating asteroids due to its extremely rapid rotation time of just 10 minutes. The “small and fast” attribute creates a very special physical environment near the asteroid’s surface, as the centrifugal force due to the rotation exceeds the gravity of the asteroid. How a target marker behaves when dropped in such an environment will be a scientifically interesting test. The characteristics of this type of celestial body have not been explored by humankind before, and the comparative observations with asteroid Ryugu are expected to deepen the scientific knowledge obtained at Ryugu.

Moreover, many asteroids of this size exist in outer space and are anticipated to collide with the Earth at a cadence of once every 100 to 1000 year, causing significant damage. However, ground-based observations are not able to reveal the details of these asteroids. Exploration with Hayabusa2 to establish both the physical characteristics of these asteroids and operation methods in the vicinity is expected to deepen knowledge about this asteroid class and provide us with useful information for designing countermeasures against an Earth collision.

The proximity flyby of asteroid 2001 CC21 scheduled for 2026 will be an additional technology demonstration that will contribute to Planetary Defense. To acquire meaningful science data with the camera onboard Hayabusa2, the spacecraft must approach as close as possible to the asteroid without a collision, and high orbit guidance accuracy relative to the asteroid is required. While optical navigation is essential due to the uncertainty in the asteroid’s orbit, asteroids are darker than planets such as the Earth and Venus, and can only be seen a few days before the flyby. The unique difficulties presented by the last minute navigation guidance for an asteroid mean that the flyby operation is similar to orbit-inducing technologies used to collide a spacecraft with an asteroid. Measures to change the orbit of an asteroid through collision with a spacecraft are being considered at a method of Planetary Defense to avoid a future Earth impact. The technology required for the flyby of Hayabusa2 can therefore directly contribute to the development of these measures.

As described above, the activities during the Hayabusa2 Extended Mission are expected to make notable contributions to Planetary Defense. This makes the significance of the mission enormous, and also explains why the challenges required for success are so diverse. For example, among the points to consider is how close the 2026 asteroid flyby can be, how the surface of the asteroid can be approached in regions where a target marker cannot be place, and what needs to be done during the ten year operation plan.

Fortunately, we still have plenty of time to plan these operations. Over this period, junior engineers who it is hoped will take on future active roles, are attempting to tackle the above mentioned interesting challenges together with colleagues who have experience in exploration. The Hayabusa2 Extended Mission is a valuable environment where both experienced and junior researchers can work together on the same issues and pass on their skills. This forms an important basis for developing the human component of exploration missions.

Sampler mechanism, Re-entry capsule, Laser ranging (LIDAR, light detection and ranging), Scientific mission equipment (near infrared and thermal infrared), Impactor, Rover (MINERVA-II)

Scientists working on Japan’s Hayabusa 2 space mission said that by using a wide range of cameras and instruments to collect images and data about the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, they had made some “tantalizing discoveries.”

“The primary one being the amount of water, or lack of it, Ryugu seems to possess,” said Seiji Sugita of the University of Tokyo’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science in a press statement as the mission released its initial findings.

The mission’s three initial papers published in the journal Science on Tuesday described the mass, size, shape, density, spin and geological properties of the asteroid, a porous “pile of rubble” shaped like a spinning top.

“Thanks to the parallel missions of Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, we can finally address the question of how these two asteroids came to be,” Sugita said. “That Bennu and Ryugu may be siblings yet exhibit some strikingly different traits implies there must be many exciting and mysterious astronomical processes we have yet to explore.”

The little spacecraft seems to already be experiencing twinges of nostalgia. As it slowly retreats from the asteroid it called home, Hayabusa2 has been snapping real-time photos of the asteroid as it departs and will continue this “Farewell Observation” until November 18.

Ryugu is a diamond-shaped asteroid just under 3,000 ft wide that orbits tens of millions of miles away from Earth. Hayabusa2’s venture, which began in 2014, is the world’s first sample return mission to a C-type asteroid.

The overlapping sample missions provide a special opportunity for the two agencies to compare findings and exchange samples, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency said in a statement.

Hayabusa 2 is an Asteroid exploration mission by the Japanese Space Exploration Agency setting out to study Asteroid 1999 JU3, dispatch a series of landers and a penetrator, and acquire sample material for return to Earth. The mission builds on the original Hayabusa mission that launched in 2003 and successfully linked up with asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and returned samples to Earth in 2010 marking the first time sample materials from an asteroid were brought back to Earth.

Hayabusa 2 is planned to complete a mission of six years – launching in December 2014 and traveling through the solar system for three and a half years, arriving at 1999 JU3 in July 2018 to spend 18 months studying the asteroid before making its return to Earth in December 2020.

Another payload of the mission is an impactor device that will be deployed towards the asteroid and uses high-explosives to generate a high-speed impact that is hoped to expose material from under the asteroid’s surface for later collection by Hayabusa 2. A deployable camera will be used to document the impact of the penetrator.

Over the next two weeks, teams were fighting to keep the mission alive since the spacecraft was loosing attitude control – its reaction wheels had already failed and the thruster leak caused the vehicle to spin – pointing its solar arrays away from the sun leading to power issues and pointing the communication antennas away from Earth. After attempts to correct the attitude by venting xenon gas through the ion thruster system, contact with the probe was lost on December 8 due to a sudden change in orientation. To stabilize, Hayabusa needed time for the conversion of precession rate to pure rotation which was expected to take several weeks.

With Hayabusa 1 still on its way through the solar system, a possible follow-on mission was proposed in 2006 to closely resemble the original mission featuring a nearly identical spacecraft with only minor changes to respond to issues seen during the Hayabusa mission. With the initial drive to fly the mission as soon as possible teams were hoping to launch in 2010 or 2011, but the budget did not permit a launch then. The additional development time allowed more changes to be made to the original spacecraft design to use more advanced and robust systems and modify the payload suite, also acquiring international support from NASA and a team of the German Aerospace Center and CNES. New systems were added including a Ka-Band antenna and impactor.

Asteroid 1999 JU3 was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) that has been heavily studied using ground and space-based telescopes. Telescopic data shows that the asteroid is about 920 meters in size and has a rotation period of 7.6 hours. Spectroscopic analysis showed that that asteroid belongs to the C-type class of primitive bodies. Data also suggests that the asteroid, at some point in its life, was in contact with water. JU3 orbits the sun in an orbit of 0.963 by 1.416 Astronomical units, inclined 5.88 degrees. This orbit, stretching from Earth’s orbit out to just outside the orbit of Mars with a small inclination makes the object suitable for a return mission.

Asteroids can be divided into different classes based on their composition with each group showing different distributions within the asteroid belt between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter, depending on their distance to the sun. While Hayabusa studied and returned sample from an S-type asteroid that are stony in composition, the follow-on mission will explore a C-type asteroid.

Other asteroid types that can be found farther from the sun are P- and D-type asteroids that are not abundantly found on Earth due to their stable orbits in the outer region of the asteroid belt or as Jovian Trojans. It is desired that a possible Hayabusa 2 follow-on mission would study one of these types of bodies to get a full picture of the composition of the different primitive bodies.

The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is similar in architecture to the first Hayabusa spacecraft with a number of notable changes, not only to the instrument and payload suite, but also to the spacecraft platform itself. These changes include the addition of a reaction wheel to create a redundant configuration, the addition of a Ka-Band communications system and changes to the Ion Engine System using more robust technology. Components kept from the original mission allow teams to rely on flight-proven technology that has shown to perform well over the course of a mission lasting over half a decade.

The original Hayabusa spacecraft had only three reaction wheels that were also capable of controlling the orientation on all axes, but did not have any redundancy. Early in the mission, one of the wheels failed followed by another later in the flight, requiring Hayabusa to rely on its engines to maintain its attitude. The addition of a fourth wheel ensures that the system can tolerate the failure of one of the wheels without losing any attitude control capabilities.

Two redundant Inertial Reference Units are used to augment attitude determination and for use to measure body rates in order to stabilize the spacecraft rates so that the star trackers can acquire star patterns which requires the spacecraft to dampen body rates to a certain level. The accelerometers provide insight into the operation of the propulsion system, allowing the precise tracking of the achieved changes in velocity supplied by the Ion Engine System that will be in operation for several thousand hours over the course of the six year mission.

Improvements made to the propulsion system from Hayabusa 1 to 2 include a 25% increase in thrust and added mechanisms to prevent plasma ignition malfunctions in the ion source. The neutralizer, that had shown degradation after the first 10,000 hours of operation, was improved by protecting the outer walls from plasma and by strengthening the magnetic field to decrease the applied voltage needed for the emission of electrons. Hayabusa 2’s ion thrusters are planned to operate for over 18,000 hours.

Having two high gain communication systems adds redundancy and also expands the vehicle’s overall capabilities in terms of downlink volume. The X-Band system will be used for day-to-day operations, that is, telemetry downlink and command uplink to the spacecraft. The Ka-Band system is primarily used for the downlink of science data, taking advantage of its higher downlink rate of 32kbit/s. The Ka-Band system also allows for a more precise DDOR (Delta-Differential One-way Ranging) that will complement the normal line-of-sight ranging and doppler measurements for improved navigation during the mission.

To serve as a demonstrator for future deep-space optical communications, LIDAR will be used around the time of the Earth flyby one year into the mission when a laser pulse will be sent from Earth to be received by LIDAR that will immediately return a pulse to the ground station to demonstrate a basic link experiment. The ground station to be used is NICT Koganei, using a 1.2J laser operating at a pulse repetition rate of 10 Hz.

The Impact Sampling System of the Hayabusa 2 mission is almost identical to that of its predecessor – firing a projectile into the asteroid that ejects small grains of material which are caught in a sampling horn and travel up the sample collection system to be sealed in containers that will eventually be returned to Earth. The sampling system from bottom to top consists of a metal aluminum skirt, an extendable fabric horn, a conical horn funneling the sample into the spacecraft to the sample catchers and the sample container inside the Return Capsule.

The optical system of the NIRS3 instrument consists of an aperture cover, a field stopslit, two mirrors, a diffraction grating, camera lenses, a detector and two calibration targets. The Al/Ge optical components reside on a stable optical bench protected by a carbon-fiber reinforced plastic box case. Infrared light entering the spectrometer through the 70 by 70-micron slit is dispersed by a flat transmission diffraction grating combined with a cross disperser. The mirrors then direct the dispersed light to the optics that re-focus the first-order light onto the detector. The spectrometer has a field of view of 0.1 by 0.1 degrees..

The Thermal Infrared Imager of the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft will deliver valuable information on the physical properties of the asteroid’s surface by monitoring regional variations of thermal inertia, thermal emissions, and temporal variations of surface temperature.

During the mission, TIR operates for one 7.6-hour asteroid rotation per week while more operating time will be available for global mapping at high phase angles. Smaller sites such as boulders and craters are identified during the mapping of the asteroid and will be observed by TIR when favorable passes occur. The instrument is active during the descent and touchdown phase for close-up and in-situ observations.

The Return Capsule of Hayabusa 2 is similar to that flown on the first mission, capable of returning the Sample Container with three filled sample catchers to Earth, performing a re-entry at a speed of 12km/s for a parachute-assisted landing in the Woomera Test Range in Australia. The Return Capsule has a total mass of 16.5 Kilograms, measures 40 centimeters in diameter and stands 20 centimeters tall.

The Hayabusa 2 mission includes a series of landing craft that are hitching a ride to the asteroid aboard the spacecraft, namely a series of three MINERVA II rovers developed at Japanese Universities and JAXA, and the MASCOT lander, a contribution from the German Aerospace Center and the French Space Agency CNES.

MASCOT – the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout is a small lander developed by the German Aerospace Center and the French Space Agency using knowledge gained from the development of the Philae lander of the Rosetta mission that became the first craft to make a soft landing on a comet in November 2014. Initial studies of the lander began in 2008 and its realization was decided by JAXA, DLR and CNES in 2012.

The MASCOT lander is designed to be able to hop from one location to another using a mobility system that will allow it to collect data from several locations while its battery lasts which is expected to be around 12 to 16 hours. The lander measures 0.3 by 0.3 by 0.2 meters in size with a mass of 10 Kilograms containing a number of subsystems including four instruments – a wide-angle camera, an imaging infrared spectrometer, a radiometer payload, and a magnetometer. Data from the instruments will significantly enhance the overall science return from the Hayabusa 2 mission, providing extensive in-situ data from the surface of an asteroid. The science payload has a mass of around 3 Kilograms.

Due to the lander’s limited mission timeline, thermal control can be accomplished with Multilayer Insulation and color coatings. Heaters are only used by the batteries and the spectrometer payload that have to be kept within survival temperature ranges during the cruise phase.

The lander is capable of receiving commands from Earth, relayed via the HY-2 spacecraft in case any intervention in the automated science sequence is needed due to any issues. Communications during cruise are accomplished through a Mechanical & Electrical Interface Antenna installed on the HY-2 spacecraft which eliminates the need for a hard-line data connection for cruise operations which include regular checkouts of the lander. The antennas operate at a frequency of 954 MHz using circular polarization. The link with HY-2 can be maintained up to a distance of 150 Kilometers achieving data rates of up to 16kbit/s, amounting to a total data volume of 0.7Gbit to be sent over the course of the lander’s mission.

The MASCOT lander uses two fully redundant Central Processing and Input/Output boards to ensure good control of the lander throughout its mission. The CPU boards use a LEON3FT processing unit that provides processing, reconfiguration and timing functions, data input/output and customization capabilities.

The CPU board also provides MRAM, SRAM and SDRAM. MASCOT uses a SpaceWire high-speed data bus and analog UART interfaces, all connected to the onboard computer by an FPGA-based input-output card. MASCOT’s control system includes an Autonomy Manager that is capable of autonomously controlling the entire surface mission of the lander to include as many sampling operations as possible.

An AOTF (Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter) is an electro-optical device that serves as an electronically tunable spectral bandpass filter with no moving parts. It uses a crystal in which Radio Frequency Waves are used to separate a single wavelength of light from a broadband source. The output wavelength is a function of the RF frequency that is applied to the crystal which can be varied.

Within the spectrometer, the AOTF acts as the monochromator. This design provides a number of advantages including long-term wavelength repeatability, extremely high wavelength purity, fast response to RF changes so that spectra can be recorded within seconds, high efficiency and long service life (no moving parts).

The spectral range and resolution of the instrument allows the identification of most potential constituents of the surface including silicates, oxides, salts, hydrated minerals, ices and frosts as well as organic compounds that are the focus of the entire mission to a C-type asteroid.

Images created by the cameras are thumbnail sized due to the low data speeds and MINERVA employs an onboard image processing tool that cuts any parts of a picture that do not contain a scene to minimize uplink volume. Surface temperature measurements at different locations and at different times of day are of great interest to scientists to better understand the energy balance of the asteroid and its surface material.

"We previously only had a handful of these rocks to study, and all of them were meteorites that fell to Earth and were stored in museums for decades to centuries, which changed their compositions," said geochemist Nicolas Dauphas, one of the three University of Chicago researchers who worked with a Japan-led international team of scientists to analyze the fragments. "Having pristine samples from outer space is simply incredible. They are witnesses from parts of the solar system that we have not otherwise explored."

In 2018, Hayabusa2 landed atop a moving asteroid named Ryugu and collected particles from above and below its surface. After spending a year and a half orbiting the asteroid, it returned to Earth with a sealed capsule containing about five grams of dust and rock. Scientists around the world have been eagerly anticipating the unique sample -- one that could help redefine our understanding of how planets evolve and how our solar system formed.

This mission is the first of several international missions that will bring back samples from another asteroid named Bennu, as well as unexplored areas on our moon, Mars, and Mars" moon Phobos. This should all be taking place in the next 10 to 20 years.

Welcome back to the Nature Podcast. This week, we’ll be getting an update on the Hayabusa2 space mission, learning about the latest efforts to target latent HIV…

Scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (or JAXA) are currently hopping up and down with excitement as they receive the first images from the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, as part of a mission to help understand the origins of life on Earth. After more than three years travelling, the plucky little probe known as Hayabusa2 has started releasing its various payloads, including some oh-so-cute, smartphone-sized hopping rovers designed the navigate the surface of the asteroid in low gravity. Now, it just so happens that Noah Baker has been in Japan for the last week or so reporting for Nature and with all the excitement surrounding the Hayabusa2 mission, he couldn’t resist heading over to JAXA for an update. A note to you here listeners, this interview was recorded last week just after the first two hopping rovers were released. We join Noah on a bus on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Back in December 2014, JAXA – the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency – launched Hayabusa2, the second of JAXA’s missions to collect and return samples from nearby asteroids. Three years later, in June this year, Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu, a kilometre-wide asteroid orbiting the Sun between the Earth and Mars. And less than two weeks ago, one of the trickiest parts of the mission began. The Hayabusa2 mothership dropped the first two of its four payloads – rovers designed to roam, or rather hop, around the asteroid’s surface, taking pictures. It was a nail-biting time, but the rovers landed safely and have started sending back some incredible images. It was a big step, but there’s still a lot to come from Hayabusa2 – explosive impactors, sample collections and the landing of the European-designed MASCOT probe. At the time of recording, it’s not yet been released but by the time you listen to this podcast we may be getting the first signals from a successful landing. But more on that later. Right now, I’m headed to Mission Control in JAXA’s Sagamihara Campus, just outside Tokyo, to hear more about those crucial rover landings and what we can expect from the Hayabusa2 mission in the coming weeks and months.

Yes, very exciting because now Hayabusa2 tries to put small lander on the surface. Also, we will try to touchdown so now it is a very exciting period.

And those images, I’ve seen some of them, they’ve been all over the media. They’re kind of action images which you don’t normally get from space missions. What was your reaction when you first saw them?

Right. So, we can see many parts of the surface of Ryugu, close up image and so many small rocks and no sun. In that sense, we were also surprised to see the real surface of Ryugu.

Interviewee: Makoto YoshikawaSo, Hayabusa2 has four rovers and lander, so now we released two of them and the next one is a little big one called MASCOT. MASCOT lander was made by the DLR and CNES - Germany and France – and we will release MASCOT lander October 2nd. And after that, MASCOT has a battery and it lasts only 16 hours or so.

And the very final bit of the mission is one of the biggest challenges you have yet, and that is to collect a sample from the asteroid to bring back. And you’re not just getting a sample from the surface of the asteroid, it’s actually from inside the asteroid and you have to get inside the asteroid first. Tell me what’s going to happen there.

Ah, yes. So, after releasing lander, next big challenge is to get the sample from the surface. So, spacecraft will make a touchdown to the surface late October. So, at first we get the surface material, but next year we will try to make a small crater on the surface of Ryugu. Hayabusa2 has an impactor.

Right. It has a two-kilogram copper and this will be accelerated to about 2 kilometres per second. The impactor mission is very risky and so when impactor explodes, Hayabusa2 spacecraft hides behind the asteroid and if a spacecraft hides behind the asteroid, we cannot see the impact event. So, before Hayabusa2 hides, it will release a small camera so the small camera can watch the impact. So, this is a very complicated and risky mission but a very exciting mission.

That was Makoto Yoshikawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency talking to Noah Baker. We’ll be sharing some of the awesome Hayabusa2 images on our Twitter (@NaturePodcast) and you can find out more on the mission at nature.com/news.

It"s less than 48 hours from when a 16-inch-wide steel capsule will do just that, rocketing through the atmosphere before unfurling a parachute and gently landing in a sparsely populated area of the Australian outback. Locked inside is ancient cargo -- pieces of a 4.6 billion-year-old near-Earth asteroid collected by Hayabusa2, the star spacecraft in the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency fleet.

The spacecraft"s achievements are some of the most valuable in the history of deep space exploration, akin to NASA"s feats of landing rovers on Mars or exploring Pluto and its moons up close. On a smaller budget than NASA"s, with a much smaller team, Japan wrote its way into space history. Yet for the mission to be considered a complete success, the team must land Hayabusa2"s sample capsule safely back on solid ground.

Hayabusa2"s journey has been near flawless to date, but JAXA"s runsheet never included "global pandemic." Travel restrictions forced Fujimoto to rewrite sample retrieval plans in April 2020, cutting the recovery team in half and mandating a quarantine period of 21 days for team members traveling to Woomera.

On Dec. 4, 2020, just over a day before the sample"s scheduled return, Fujimoto fronts a press conference in Woomera, discussing the mission. Over the past three weeks, he"s hardly slept, but the only hint he"s tired is a cappuccino he cradles in his hand. He takes a sip. "I don"t think you can sleep in my position," he tells me.

Despite his scientific sensibilities, Fujimoto believes fate is guiding the asteroid sample back to Earth. Strange coincidences throughout the vehicle"s six-year journey, he says, demonstrate this theory. Signs the mission is destined for success.

The strangest of them all? On the night Hayabusa2"s sample capsule comes careening back to Earth, the Woomera Theatre, which has 500 seats and only one screen, is scheduled to show Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

The original 2003 mission put JAXA on the world stage, highlighting its engineering prowess. The first asteroid sample-return mission ever attempted, Hayabusa was designed to travel to an irregular, slug-shaped body known as 4660 Nereus, briefly touch down on its surface, steal away pieces of rock and ferry them back to Earth.

The thinking back then, Fujimoto says, was to perform a feat of cosmic exploration NASA "would never dare" attempt, but the mission was plagued by problems almost as soon as it launched.

The team tried everything to locate the spacecraft. Junichiro Kawaguchi, the JAXA scientist who led the mission, even remembers visiting a small shrine, about five minutes walk from mission control, to ask for divine intervention. "Parents used to go to that shrine and pray their kid will come back," Fujimoto says.

It limped home three years late, ejected its sample capsule and slammed into the atmosphere. In its final moments, the spacecraft showered the skies over Woomera with thousands of fireballs. As the final sparks winked out, Hayabusa"s mission came to a close. JAXA was not deterred by the original mission"s problems, and plans for a sequel were already in motion. It would use Hayabusa as a starting point and visit an entirely new asteroid.

JAXA"s only option with the Hayabusa missions was cheap and efficient. The agency operates on a budget roughly 5% of NASA"s, with a team about one-tenth the size. The budget for Hayabusa2 is about one-third of NASA"s for Osiris-Rex, an asteroid sample return mission the US agency launched in 2016.We were behind schedule a lot of the time.

Though troubled, Hayabusa"s ion engines, designed and built in house by now-ISAS director general Hitoshi Kuninaka and his team, provided a solid foundation for Hayabusa2. But the team was constantly under pressure. "We were behind schedule a lot of the time," says Ryudo Tsukizaki, a JAXA engineer.

Hayabusa2"s engines would need to help carry the spacecraft 1.75 billion miles to reach its destination. Kazutaka Nishiyama, a JAXA engineer who led the ion engine team, says it was critical to increase the lifespan of the engines. Three of Hayabusa"s engines failed at around 10,000 hours -- 14 months -- due to a critical component of the engine known as a "neutralizer." Tinkering with the neutralizer provided the necessary improvements to the lifespan.

At the ISAS laboratory in Japan, an earthbound twin of the Hayabusa2"s ion engine system is still being tested in a vacuum chamber today. When I talked to Nishiyama in October 2020, it had been switched on for 67,000 hours (seven and a half years). The early results of the test imbued the team with renewed conviction.

Hayabusa2 launched on Dec. 3, 2014, from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. By the time launch day rolled around, the stress and pressure of ion engine development had all but faded. "We were very confident," says JAXA engineer Tsukizaki. For large parts of the mission, it cruised through the dark, lit by the aqua glow of its ion thrusters and dim light from the sun. Unlike its predecessor, it had a faultless flight, marked only by an occasional wave of X-rays washing over the spacecraft and periodically stopping the engines.

But when Hayabusa2 left Earth, it was headed to an asteroid without an official name. Its provisional designation, 1999 JU3, merely referred to the date and time of its discovery. The rock was a mystery.

It was no palace. It was a wasteland. Strewn with mammoth boulders and pockmarked by craters, Ryugu was immediately deemed "unfriendly" by members of the science team. "It was beyond our imagination," says Tsuda, project manager on the mission. "It"s a really hopeless terrain."

"Missions like Hayabusa and Hayabusa2, and Osiris-Rex, are a first step towards deflecting asteroids, and also mining them," says Jonti Horner, an astrophysicist at the University of Southern Queensland. Asteroid mining is too expensive to be feasible today, but demonstrating that samples can be gathered and returned from distant space rocks could lead to a greener, near-unlimited resource of Earth metals like copper, nickel and platinum. A similar process, Horner says, might help change the trajectory of an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth.

"We needed a 100-meter-diameter flat area," says Tsuda, "but there"s no such space on the surface of Ryugu." He was acutely aware of how things could go wrong, having worked on the first Hayabusa mission.

Hayabusa2 performed a touchdown rehearsal in September 2018, a month before the first landing operation was scheduled to occur. It approached Ryugu slowly, scanning the surface with a laser that gauges altitude. At a height of 600 meters, it stopped descending. The spacecraft had a memory lapse, losing track of the distance to the surface. To save itself, it autonomously backed away. After reviewing the issue, the team decided on postponing the first touchdown. They neededto find a good landing spot.

Originally, Hayabusa2 planned to drop a softball-sized, reflective marker to the surface duringthe touchdown operation and then follow it to the surface. But the team reasoned that if it dropped the marker a few months prior to touchdown, that would provide Hayabusa2 with a beacon it could use as a guide, like a lighthouse shepherding a ship to shore.

Fortunately, Hayabusa2 had already proved itself a sharpshooter. It had deployed two hopping rovers, Hibou and Owl, to Ryugu"s surface, along with a third robotic scout, Mascot, developed by the German Aerospace Center and France"s National Centre for Space Studies. The box-shaped hoppers were the first spacecraft to image an asteroid from the surface and measure properties never considered before. When it came time to land the target marker, the operation proceeded without fault.

With the sun rising over mission control in Sagamihara on Feb. 21, 2019, Tsuda donned his off-white Hayabusa2 mission jacket, and the team began its operation. The control room was calm. Expectant. But as they performed final checks on Hayabusa2 before descent, the mission was thrown into chaos.

The distance between Earth and Hayabusa2, floating above Ryugu, is about 210 million miles. Orders, uploaded from Japan, take about 20 minutes to reach the spacecraft. It"s programmed to perform operations autonomously and, if something goes wrong, there"s no opportunity to correct on the fly.

When JAXA found Hayabusa2 was not in position to start its descent, the touchdown plan had to be reworked once again. "We had to delay the start of the descent by five hours," says Tsuda. The slight delay might not seem significant, but in that time the team essentially reprogrammed Hayabusa2"s guidance systems for the operation.

Finally, just after midday on Feb. 21, the touchdown operation was declared a "go." The new commands had been uploaded. The fate of Hayabusa2 rested solely in the spacecraft"s hands. It descended.

The pressure was huge, Takanao, the engineer, says. As the team waited, Sakanao interlaced his fingers, as if in prayer, staring at the screen. Almost 25 hours after JAXA began the operation, the thin, red line blinked into existence on the screen. They"d done it. Hayabusa2 was not equipped with cameras inside the sample capsule, but data streaming back from the spacecraft showed it had fired its projectile and picked up a bucketful of material, storing it away for the return journey.

Hayabusa2 had done what Hayabusa could not. It had retrieved innumerable treasures from the ancient space rock. The team nicknamed the touchdown site Tamatebako.

Strapped to the underside of the spacecraft was an explosive known as the Small Carry-on Impactor that JAXA scientists, including Takanao, had designed for Hayabusa2 to drop on Ryugu to create an artificial crater and allow the team to sample material from beneath the asteroid"s surface. But the team agonized over one key decision: Should they use it?

Fujimoto says there were many "interesting" conversations leading up to the operation, describing heated debates about whether it was worth the risk. Tsuda notes that the first touchdown was "mandatory" for the mission"s success, but the second touchdown was "the first time we purely pursued the scientific value."

On April 5, 2019, a 4.4-pound copper disc was volleyed from the SCI at a speed of 2 kilometers per second. It collided with Ryugu"s side and sprayed rock across its body, leaving a scar on the surface about 32 feet wide and six feet deep. "This exposed subsurface material around the artificial crater," Tsuda says.The SCI departing Hayabusa2 en route to bombing Ryugu. JAXA

Scientists could pick practically anywhere safe on the surface for Hayabusa2"s first landing. But for the second, there were no options. "To collect subsurface materials, we must land near the artificial crater," says Shota Kikuchi, a JAXA engineer who helped plot the second landing. But the team did get "really lucky," according to Yuri Shimaki, a post-doctoral engineer at ISAS, because the SCI hit at such an angle that Hayabusa2 could retrieve an abundance of ejected material. Not before a lot more training, though.

The engineering and science teams simulated touchdown operations from the mission control room on Earth, running through hundreds of scenarios. One team member would be assigned the role of "God," tasked with simulating the entire second touchdown from start to finish.

Team members huddled around the Doppler data on the wall for a second time. At 10:51 a.m. on July 11, Tsuda declared the mission a success. The celebrations, too, were a carbon copy, but this one meant a little more. JAXA had taken the risk and succeeded. Looking back, Fujimoto calls the second touchdown "one of the defining moments" of his career.

In Japan, JAXA hasn"t always been seen as a space powerhouse. A difficult decade of launch failures and satellite deaths marred the Japanese space program before Hayabusa"s launch in 2003. As troubled as that mission was, Hayabusa overcame nearly insurmountable odds and provided a launchpad for the agency"s profile to skyrocket.

But internationally, JAXA doesn"t receive the same level of adoration as its counterparts at NASA or the European Space Agency. Partly that"s due to the language barrier. Elizabeth Tasker, an astrophysicist with JAXA who led the English efforts for Hayabusa2, is responsible for delivering mission updates and releases from the agency. She says "there"s no reason in terms of the science they"re doing not to get equal levels of recognition."

But as Hayabusa2"s achievements mounted, there was plenty to celebrate. JAXA resolved to tell the spacecraft"s story to the world and its outreach efforts dramatically increased. It even enlisted the help of Queen guitarist Brian May, himself an astrophysicist, to produce stereoscopic images of Ryugu"s surface. The work enabled Ryugu to be seen in a new light, which, May says, "makes us feel like we are sitting next to these incredible objects." He"s been thoroughly impressed by the JAXA team.

On the day before landing, I corner Fujimoto after his press conference in Woomera and we discuss the mission so far. We"ve been talking online for weeks, and now, meeting for the first time, I want to shake his hand and say hello. But I can"t. A face mask is draped over my ears, the mission name and date embroidered with blue thread on the front.

When Hayabusa2 departed Ryugu on Nov. 13, 2019, it was the Before Times. A huge contingent of JAXA staff were preparing for a trip Down Under to witness the end of their decade of hard work. COVID-19 saw those plans disintegrate.

Clear skies aren"t necessary for the sample to return to Earth, but rain and clouds will hamper the capsule"s recovery mission. Still, Fujimoto holds on to his positive emotions -- the "Don"t Stop Me Now" mentality he"s carried the whole operation. When he heads toward the operations room deep within the Prohibited Area at midday on Dec. 5, he sees the skies clearing to the west.

The blue light illuminates the darkness of the underground-cave-dressed-as-a-hotel-room I"ve booked for the night in Coober Pedy. Almost directly above my room is a lookout, a gravelly hillside, that a brochure tells me provides "the best view of town." That makes it a perfect spot to watch Hayabusa2"s sample capsule return.Video of the fireball taken from Coober Pedy on the morning of Dec. 6, 2020. JAXA

I climb up the steel steps to the top of the lookout, where I"m met by a chilly breeze and a dozen other stargazers. Fortunately, the storm clouds from earlier in the day have all but disappeared. My eyes adjust to the night sky, and stars blink into sight. A dozen visitors mingle about, trading hometowns and occupations in lieu of longer narratives -- there"s no time for in-depth conversation because, in just a few moments, Hayabusa2"s treasure boxwill cut through the dark.

Two hundred miles to the southeast, the capsule is slowing down, just as expected. As it reaches an altitude of about 10 kilometers, it deploys a radar-reflective parachute and ejects its heat shield. Ground stations established across the desert track its descent. Half an hour later, JAXA mission control in Woomera calls touchdown. After 2,000 days in space, Hayabusa2"s tamatebakois finally safe on Earth.

For the Hayabusa2 mothership, the mission carries on for another decade, heading to ever more mysterious, unexplored worlds. The spacecraft will perform multiple flybys of the Earth over the next decade, tinkering with its trajectory enough to visit two asteroids by 2032. The show must go on.

This piece was originally published with the title "Journey to the Dragon Palace: Inside Hayabusa2"s history-making asteroid mission" on March 17, 2021. It has been republished on June 30 to coincide with