Japan's Space Program

Toroid

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Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft landed on a diamond shaped asteroid 2 billion miles away after a 3.5 year journey.
Japanese spacecraft reaches asteroid after three-and-a-half-year journey – Spaceflight Now
Hayabusa2 - Wikipedia
Japan’s robotic Hayabusa 2 spacecraft arrived Wednesday at asteroid Ryugu, a diamond-shaped object more than a half-mile wide where the probe will attempt a brief landing later this year to collect rock specimens for return to Earth.

After creeping up to the asteroid at an ever-slowing pace, thrusters on the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft stopped its approach Wednesday at a distance of about 12 miles, or 20 kilometers, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The milestone marked the conclusion of a three-and-a-half-year voyage spanning nearly 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) since Hayabusa 2’s launch from southern Japan on an H-2A rocket in December 2014.

The space probe and asteroid Ryugu, seen up-close for the first time, are currently located roughly 177 million miles (285 million kilometers) from Earth. Under remote control from engineers and scientists in Japan, Hayabusa 2 will spend the next few weeks surveying Ryugu, moving closer in a sequence of maneuvers to obtain higher-resolution imagery and data on the asteroid’s gravity field.

“The shape of Ryugu is now revealed,” wrote Yuichi Tsuda, Hayabusa 2’s project manager at JAXA. “From a distance, Ryugu initially appeared round, then gradually turned into a square before becoming a beautiful shape similar to fluorite [known as the ‘firefly stone’ in Japanese].

“Now, craters are visible, rocks are visible and the geographical features are seen to vary from place to place,” Tsuda wrote. “This form of Ryugu is scientifically surprising and also poses a few engineering challenges.”

Hayabusa 2 will try to capture at least a gram of rock samples from Ryugu on three touch-and-go landing attempts, beginning as soon as early October. In late 2019, the spacecraft will depart the asteroid and head for Earth, dropping its sample-carrying re-entry canister for a parachute-assisted landing in South Australia in December 2020.

Scientists said Ryugu’s rotation is perpendicular to its orbit, which is good news for plans later this year to deploy a series of landers and tiny rovers on the asteroid, beginning with the deployment in October of the 10-pound (22-kilogram) MASCOT vehicle developed by German and French engineers.

The asteroid completes one rotation every 7.6 hours, and its orbit takes it around the sun once every 1.3 years. Ryugu’s orbit crosses the path of Earth around the sun, making it a potentially hazardous asteroid.

“On the other hand, there is a peak in the vicinity of the equator and a number of large craters, which makes the selection of the landing points both interesting and difficult,” Tsuda wrote.

The shape of Ryugu also suggests it may have an uneven gravity field, which is estimated to be around 60,000 times weaker than Earth’s, according to Tsuda.

“The project team is fascinated by the appearance of Ryugu and morale is rising at the prospect of this challenge,” Tsuda wrote. “Together with all of you, we have become the first eyewitnesses to see asteroid Ryugu. I feel this amazing honor as we proceed with the mission operations.”

All of Hayabusa 2’s science instruments are functioning as designed. The sensors include a camera suite, a laser designed to measure topography, and a near-infrared spectrometer to study Ryugu’s composition.

“At the end of July we will approach to within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the surface, so we will have much more detailed surface images,” said Makoto Yoshikawa, Hayabusa 2’s mission manager, in an interview with Spaceflight Now earlier this month. “Also, in August, we will measure the gravity of Ryugu, and in that case we will send the spacecraft down to 1 kilometer (about 3,300 feet) from the surface.”

After the initial survey, Japanese scientists will decide in August where to send Hayabusa 2 to collect the first of three samples from Ryugu.

Hayabusa 2 will not go into orbit around Ryugu. Instead, the probe will follow trajectories around the asteroid, similar to the way a rendezvousing spacecraft approaches the International Space Station.

Since switching off its ion propulsion system in early June, Hayabusa employed hydrazine-fueled rocket thrusters to follow a zig-zag pattern toward Ryugu, taking range and bearing measurements to fine-tune its navigation to the asteroid. There was some uncertainty in the asteroid’s exact position before Hayabusa 2’s arrival.

The spacecraft’s telescopic camera also scanned for moons and other debris accompanying Ryugu, but found no evidence of any companions.

In an interview with BBC News on Wednesday, Yoshikawa said the sampling maneuvers will the be the riskiest part of the Hayabusa 2 mission.

“The most difficult part is getting the sample,” Yoshikawa told BBC News. “It is a little risky because we cannot operate from the Earth because there is a time delay, so the spacecraft must move by itself. The spacecraft has autonomous functions, but it’s very risky because the surface of Ryugu is not so smooth.”

We have three touchdowns (planned),” he said. “The first one is maybe in October. The second is maybe next year in February or March.

“So we have two chances, and actually one more,” he told BBC News. “Hayabusa 2 has an impactor which will create a small crater on the surface of the asteroid. If we can make a small crater, then the spacecraft will touch down at the crater to get subsurface material.”

Hayabusa 2 is one of two robotic asteroid missions arriving at distant objects this year. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which launched in September 2016, is scheduled to arrive at asteroid Bennu on Dec. 3 to collect its own samples to bring back to Earth.

Hayabusa 2 is a follow-up to Japan’s Hayabusa mission, which collect less than a milligram of sample from the stony S-type asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and returned the material to Earth in 2010. But Hayabusa ran into numerous difficulties, including a fuel leak and a malfunction in its sampling mechanism, causing it to collect much less material than originally planned.

“Hayabusa was a technological demonstrator, so its main purpose was technology and the second purpose is science,” Yoshikawa said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. “For Hayabusa 2, science is the main purpose. That’s the big difference.”

Ryugu is a primitive C-type asteroid that contains organic materials scientists believe are leftovers from the birth of the solar system.

“For both missions, we wanted to learn about the origins of the solar system, but for Hayabusa 2, we want to understand the organic matter and water at the beginning of the solar system,” Yoshikawa said. “This is the major point for science.”


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Toroid

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Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is about to drop two tiny rovers onto asteroid Ryugu.
A Japanese Probe Is About to Drop Two Hopping Robots Onto Asteroid Ryugu
A Japanese asteroid-sampling probe is about to get up close and personal with its target space rock.

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft will drop two tiny rovers onto the asteroid Ryugu this week, possibly as early as Thursday (Sept. 20), if all goes according to plan.

The Hayabusa2 team began prepping seriously for the epic maneuver last week. The current schedule calls for the mother ship to descend toward Ryugu today (Sept. 19) and for the two little disk-shaped robots, known as MINERVA-II1A and MINERVA-II1B, to deploy as early as tomorrow, U.S. time. (Officials with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, have cited Sept. 20 and Sept. 21 for these events, but that's apparently on Japan time, which is 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Daylight Time.) [Japan's Hayabusa2 Asteroid Mission in Pictures]

Each MINERVA-II rover measures 7 inches wide by 2.8 inches tall (18 by 7 centimeters), with a mass of about 2.4 lbs. (1.1 kilogram). And they won't "rove" in the traditional sense; instead of rolling along on wheels like a Mars or moon explorer, the duo will hop from place to place on Ryugu.

"Gravity on the surface of Ryugu is very weak, so a rover propelled by normal wheels or crawlers would float upwards as soon as it started to move," Hayabusa2 team members wrote in a MINERVA-II1 description. "Therefore, this hopping mechanism was adopted for moving across the surface of such small celestial bodies. The rover is expected to remain in the air for up to 15 minutes after a single hop before landing, and to move up to 15 m [50 feet] horizontally."

The rovers will move autonomously, exploring multiple areas on the surface of the 3,000-foot-wide (950 meters) Ryugu, the update added. The duo will gather a variety of data with their science gear, which includes temperature sensors, optical sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes and a total of seven cameras that are shared by the two rovers.

The upcoming touchdowns kick off an extended surface-exploration campaign for the $150 million Hayabusa2 mission, which launched in December 2014 and arrived in orbit around Ryugu on June 27 of this year. Hayabusa2 is scheduled to drop a larger lander called MASCOT onto the asteroid next month, and another little hopping rover, MINERVA-II2, next year.

And the Hayabusa2 mothership will make several forays of its own to the surface next year, grabbing Ryugu material each time. The orbiter will leave Ryugu in December 2019, and its samples will return to Earth in a special capsule a year later.

Scientists will study this returned dirt and rock in detail to learn about the early history of the solar system, and the role asteroids may have played in helping life get going on Earth, mission team members have said.

MINERVA-II stands for "Micro Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid, second generation." The first-generation rover flew aboard the original Hayabusa mission, which arrived in orbit around the asteroid Itokawa in September 2005. In a historic first, Hayabusa returned a tiny sample of Itokawa to Earth in 2010. But its MINERVA hopper did not land successfully on the space rock.

Hayabusa2 isn't the only asteroid-sampling mission operating right now. NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe is closing in on its target, the 1,640-foot-wide (500 m) near-Earth asteroid Bennu. OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to arrive in orbit around Bennu on Dec. 31 and return samples of the space rock to Earth in September 2023.
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As Above So Below
The shadow of Hayabusa2 showing on the surface of Ryugu...

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Toroid

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The two rovers successfully landed on the Ryugu.
They Made It! Japan's Two Hopping Rovers Successfully Land on Asteroid Ryugu
The suspense is over: Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu — and they've even sent back some wild postcards from their new home.

The tiny rovers are part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission. Engineers with the agency deployed the robots early Friday (Sept. 21), but JAXA waited until today (Sept. 22) to confirm the operation was successful and both rovers made the landing safely.
 

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Japanese company ispace says it will launch two missions to the Moon in 2020 and 2021
A Japanese company with hopes of exploring the Moon says it has purchased room on two upcoming flights of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in order to transport spacecraft to the lunar surface. These missions, slated for 2020 and 2021, are meant to serve as crucial technology demonstrations for the company, called ispace, which has grander ambitions of becoming a lunar delivery service one day.

The first of ispace’s two missions entails putting a spacecraft into orbit around the Moon. If that is successful, then the company will launch its second mission — one that includes a lunar lander and rovers to explore the Moon’s surface. All of ispace’s hardware will ride as secondary payloads on the Falcon 9 flights; that means they will hitch rides on the larger vehicles that are launching to space and deploy separately. The rockets will drop off the spacecraft in a high orbit above Earth, and the vehicles will cruise the rest of the way to the Moon.

the X Prize competition ultimately concluded this year, and the organizers announced that none of the finalists would make it to the Moon before this year’s March 31st deadline, adding that the cash prizes would go back to Google.

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A rendering of an ispace rover.
Image: ispace
However, many of the finalist teams are still moving forward with their lunar ambitions. ispace, which oversaw team HAKUTO, is using what it learned from the X Prize competition to make these upcoming trips even more robust. The company won’t be using the rover that it developed for X Prize. However, the rovers for the second mission are based on the framework from the original HAKUTO rover. They’ve been upgraded to increase their overall power, the distance they can travel, and the amount of cargo they can carry — up to 5.5 pounds of extra room. They’ll also carry an internal sensor that will scout for water.

fly their HAKUTO rover on a lander from a fellow finalist TeamIndus. Now it seems that contract has been canceled. ispace will be making its own way to the lunar surface, expanding on a lander design concept that the company teased late last year. The lander is meant to demonstrate a soft landing on the lunar surface, as well as act as a communications relay for the rovers while they explore.

But before the lunar lander and rovers make it to the Moon, ispace will try to demonstrate that it can put a spacecraft into lunar orbit. That vehicle, if successfully inserted, will remain in orbit for one to two months, testing out navigational cameras that ispace plans to use for the lander and rover mission. It will also take images of the lunar surface and send those images down to Earth.

Since ispace is drawing on hardware that it developed for the X Prize competition, the company has decided to call its inaugural missions HAKUTO-R, with the “R” standing for reboot. The designs for the lunar spacecraft recently underwent a preliminary design review, according to the company. A panel of 26 experts from Japan’s space agency, as well as Europe and the US, said that the design was feasible and that ispace needed to work on a few “key actions.” ispace has started obtaining some of the flight hardware for these missions, and the company plans to do testing through spring of 2019, with assembly beginning in the summer of that year.

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Image: SpaceX
ispace, which has headquarters in Japan, Luxembourg, and the US, has raised nearly $95 million, and it will use that money to help fund these first two Falcon 9 flights. Eventually, ispace hopes to create a sustainable space infrastructure by delivering instruments to the Moon for customers, as well as utilizing water found on the Moon as a resource for future space travel.

“We are entering a new era in space exploration and SpaceX is proud to have been selected by ispace to launch their first lunar missions,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement. “We are looking forward to delivering their innovative spacecraft to the Moon.”

ispace isn’t the only former X Prize team that SpaceX will help get to the lunar surface. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is also slated to carry an Israeli lander later this year, one that was developed by former X Prize finalist team SpaceIL. That lander is slated to land on the Moon in early 2019. Meanwhile, another former X Prize team, Astrobotic, has plans to launch its lander, called Peregrine, on an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance sometime in mid-2020.

So if all goes well, the next couple of years could be a busy time on the lunar surface, with multiple private companies exploring what the Moon has to offer.

Update September 26th, 9:30AM ET: This article was updated to include more information about the missions from a follow-up press conference.
 

Toroid

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TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s space agency said an explosive dropped Friday from its Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully blasted the surface of an asteroid for the first time to form a crater and pave the way for the collection of underground samples for possible clues to the origin of the solar system.

Friday’s mission was the riskiest for Hayabusa2 because it had to immediately move away so it wouldn’t get hit by flying shards from the blast.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said Hayabusa2 dropped a small explosive box which sent a copper ball the size of a baseball slamming into the asteroid, and that data confirmed the spacecraft had safely evacuated and remained intact. JAXA later confirmed the impact from images transmitted from a camera left behind by the spacecraft which showed the impactor being released and fine particles later spraying dozens of meters (yards) out from a spot on the asteroid.


“The mission was a success,” JAXA project manager Yuichi Tsuda said, beaming. “It is highly likely to have made a crater.”

JAXA plans to send Hayabusa2, which was moved to the other side of the asteroid, back to the site after dust and debris settle for observations and to collect samples of material from the new crater that was unexposed to the sun or space rays. Scientists hope the samples will help them understand the history of the solar system, since asteroids are left over material from its formation.

No such samples have been recovered. In a 2005 “deep impact” mission to a comet, NASA observed fragments after blasting the surface but did not collect them.

Last month, JAXA announced that a group of scientists participating in the Hayabusa2 mission had detected hydroxyl-bearing minerals on the asteroid by analyzing near-infrared spectrometer readings by the spacecraft. It said that could help explain where the Earth’s water came from. The results were published in the online edition of Science magazine.

“So far, Hayabusa2 has done everything as planned, and we are delighted,” mission leader Makoto Yoshikawa said earlier Friday. “But we still have more missions to achieve and it’s too early for us to celebrate.”

Hayabusa2 successfully touched down on a small level area on the boulder-strewn asteroid in February, when it also collected some surface dust and small debris. The craft is scheduled to leave the asteroid at the end of 2019 and bring the surface fragments and underground samples back to Earth in late 2020.

The asteroid, named Ryugu after an undersea palace in a Japanese folktale, is about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth.

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