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Journal ArticleDOI

MASCOT—The Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout Onboard the Hayabusa2 Mission

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TLDR
In this paper, a mobile asteroid surface SCOuT (MASCOT) was developed by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in collaboration with the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).
Abstract
On December 3rd, 2014, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) launched successfully the Hayabusa2 (HY2) spacecraft to its journey to Near Earth asteroid (162173) Ryugu. Aboard this spacecraft is a compact landing package, MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid surface SCOuT), which was developed by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in collaboration with the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). Similar to the famous predecessor mission Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, will also study an asteroid and return samples to Earth. This time, however, the target is a C-type asteroid which is considered to be more primitive than (25143) Itokawa and provide insight into an even earlier stage of our Solar System. Upon arrival at asteroid Ryugu in 2018, MASCOT will be released from the HY2 spacecraft and gently descend by free fall from an altitude of about 100 m to the surface of the asteroid. After a few bounces, the lander will come to rest at the surface and perform its scientific investigations of the surface structure and mineralogical composition, the thermal behaviour and the magnetic properties by operating its four scientific instruments. Those include an IR imaging spectrometer (MicrOmega, IAS Paris), a camera (MASCAM, DLR Berlin), a radiometer (MARA, DLR Berlin) and a magnetometer (MASMAG, TU Braunschweig). In order to allow optimized payload operations the thermal design of MASCOT is required to cope with the contrasting requirements of the 4-year cruise in cold environment versus the hot conditions on the surface of the asteroid. Operations up to 2 asteroid days (∼16 hours) based on a primary battery are currently envisaged. A mobility mechanism allows locomotion on the surface. The mechanism is supported by an attitude and motion sensing system and an intelligent autonomy manager, which is implemented in the onboard software that enables MASCOT to operate fully independently when ground intervention is not available.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Hayabusa2 Mission Overview

TL;DR: The Hayabusa2 mission as mentioned in this paper was the first mission to explore a C-type near-Earth asteroid (162173) Ryugu (1999 JU3) to observe and explore the 900 m-sized object, and return samples collected from the surface layer.
Journal ArticleDOI

Highly porous nature of a primitive asteroid revealed by thermal imaging

Tatsuaki Okada, +97 more
- 26 Mar 2020 - 
TL;DR: Thermal imaging data obtained from the spacecraft Hayabusa2 reveal that the carbonaceous asteroid 162173 Ryugu is an object of unusually high porosity, which constrain the formation history of Ryugu.
Journal ArticleDOI

Images from the surface of asteroid Ryugu show rocks similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites

TL;DR: Images from the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout lander show that rocks on asteroid Ryugu are similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, and close-up images of a rock reveal a dark matrix with small, bright, spectrally different inclusions, implying that it did not experience extensive aqueous alteration.
Journal ArticleDOI

Hop Reachable Domain on Irregularly Shaped Asteroids

TL;DR: The hopping rover is a promising solution for small celestial body surface mobility but how to predict its locomotion and landing area is challenging when considering the complex dynamical environment.
References
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Book ChapterDOI

Deep Impact: A Large-Scale Active Experiment on a Cometary Nucleus

TL;DR: The Deep Impact mission as discussed by the authors provides the first data on the interior of a cometary nucleus and a comparison of those data with data collected on the surface of the cometary surface.
Journal ArticleDOI

Surface elements and landing strategies for small bodies missions – Philae and beyond

TL;DR: The Rosetta Lander is currently on its way to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and it will land in November 2014 and perform numerous experiments with a suite of 10 scientific instruments.
Journal ArticleDOI

Rosetta Lander – Philae: Landing preparations☆

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors summarized the selection process for a landing site and the planning for separation, descent and landing (SDL) strategy for the Rosetta and Philae land on November 12th and perform in-situ studies of the cometary material.
Journal ArticleDOI

A Mathematical Model of a Lithium/Thionyl Chloride Primary Cell

TL;DR: In this article, a 1D mathematical model for the lithium/thionyl chloride primary cell was developed to investigate methods of improving its performance and safety, including the porous lithium chloride film which forms on the anode surface, and the governing equations are formulated from fundamental conservation laws using porous electrode theory and concentrated solution theory.
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