Hayabusa2 mission status: Landing, roving and cratering on asteroid Ryugu

By Y. Tsuda, T. Saiki, F. Terui, S. Nakazawa, M. Yoshikawa, Sei‐ichiro Watanabe. Acta Astronautica, 2020

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Abstract Hayabusa2 arrived at the C-type asteroid Ryugu in June 2018. During one and a half year of the Ryugu-proximity operation, we succeeded in two rovers landing, one lander landing, two spacecraft touchdown/sample collection, one kinetic impact operation and two tiny reflective balls and one rover orbiting. Among the two successful touchdowns, the second one succeeded in collecting subsurface material exposed by the kinetic impact operation. This paper describes the asteroid proximity operation activity of the Hayabusa2 mission, and gives an overview of the achievements done so far. Some important engineering and scientific activities, which have been done in synchronous with the spacecraft operations to tackle with unexpected Ryugu environment, are also described.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5a326c307c6f396e5d58e578956167df80cbf838