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Six minutes of free fall, a slight impact on the asteroid then 11 minutes of rebound until his complete stop. So in the early morning of October 3, 2018, the journey of the MASCOT lander began on the asteroid Ryugu – a country full of wonder, mystery and challenges.
About 17 hours of scientific exploration followed this first "ride" on the asteroid nearly 900 meters in diameter. The LG was controlled and controlled from the MASCOT control center located on the site of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in Cologne in the presence of scientific teams from Germany. , France and Japan.
MASCOT exceeded all expectations and performed its four experiments at several locations on the asteroid. Never before in the history of spaceflight, a solar system body had been explored in this way. It is now possible to accurately track the MASCOT path on the Ryugu surface based on the image data of the Japanese space probe Hayabusa2 and images and data of the undercarriage.
"This success has been made possible by advanced robotics technology, long – term planning and intensive international cooperation between scientists and engineers from the three space countries, Japan, France and the United States. Germany, "said Hansjorg Dittus, board member of the DLR. for Space Research and Technology about this milestone in the exploration of the solar system. "We are proud of the way MASCOT was able to control its way through the Ryugu asteroid on rocks and rocks and send so much data about its composition to Earth," said Pascale Ehrenfreund, president of the DLR.
MASCOT had no propulsion system and landed in free fall. Six minutes after being separated from Hayabusa2 and after the end of a ballistic trajectory, the landing module made its first contact with the asteroid Ryugu. On the surface, MASCOT switched to the activation of a tungsten swingarm accelerated and slowed down by an engine.
This allowed MASCOT to be repositioned on the "correct" side or even to jump on the surface of the asteroid. The gravitational attraction of Ryugu is only one 66,500th of that of the Earth. The little dynamism provided was therefore sufficient: a technological innovation for an unusual form of mobility on an asteroid surface used for the first time in the history of space travel. Hayabusa Mission2.
Through a rocky garden full of rough rocks and no flat surfaces
To reconstruct the path of MASCOT on the surface of Ryugu, the cameras on board the mother probe Hayabusa2 aimed at the asteroid. The Optical Navigation Cameras (ONC) captured the freefall of the LG in several images, detected its ground shadow during the flight phase and finally identified MASCOT directly to the surface in multiple images.
The pattern of innumerable rocks spread to the surface could also be seen in the respective horizon direction on oblique photographs of the DLR MASCAM camera of the LG. The combination of this information has unlocked the unique path drawn by the LG.
After the first impact, MASCOT bounced smoothly over a large block, touched the ground about eight times, and then found himself in an unfavorable resting position. After having ordered and executed a specially prepared correction maneuver, MASCOT stopped a second time.
The exact location of this second position is still being determined. There, the LG made detailed measurements during an asteroid day and night. This was followed by a small "mini-motion" to provide the MicrOmega spectrometer with even better conditions for measuring the composition of the asteroid material.
Finally, MASCOT was set in motion one last time for a bigger jump. At the last place, he made some extra measurements before the start of the third night on the asteroid and contact with Hayabusa2 was lost as the spacecraft had come out of the line of sight. The last signal from MASCOT reached the mother probe at 21:04 CEST.
The mission was over. "We were expecting less than 16 hours of autonomy because of the cold night," says Tra-Mi Ho, MASCOT Project Manager, DLR Institute for Space Systems. "After all, we were able to use MASCOT for over an additional hour.At the beginning of the radio shadow, it was a great success." During the mission, the team was christened the landing site of MASCOT (MA-9) "Alice's Wonderland", from the eponymous book by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898).
A real wonderland
After reconstructing the events occurring on the Ryugu asteroid, scientists are now analyzing the first results from the data and images acquired. "What we saw from a distance already gave us an idea of what it might look like on the surface," reports Ralf Jaumann of the DLR Planetary Research Institute and scientific director of the MASCOT mission.
"In fact, it's even crazier than expected, everything is covered with rough blocks and littered with blocks, and since these blocks are compact and what they're made of, we still do not know it." But the most amazing thing was that large accumulations of fine materials can not be found – and we did not expect that – we need to study this in the coming weeks, because cosmic aging would have had to produce fine materials, "continues Jaumann.
"MASCOT delivered exactly what we expected: an" extension "of the space probe to the Ryugu surface and direct on-site measurements," said Tra-Mi Ho. There are now measurements across the spectrum, from the light curves of the telescope from Earth to remote sensing with Hayabusa2 until the microscopic discoveries of MASCOT. "This will be of paramount importance for the characterization of this class of asteroids," Jaumann emphasizes.
Ryugu is a C-type asteroid – a carbon-rich representative of the solar system's oldest bodies, four and a half billion years old. It is a "primordial" building block of planet formation and one of the 17,000 known asteroids close to the Earth.
On Earth, there are meteorites whose composition might resemble that of Ryugu, found in the Murchison Range, Australia. However, Matthias Grott of the DLR Planetary Research Institute and responsible for the MARA radiometer experiment is skeptical as to whether these meteorites are really representative of Ryugu in terms of physical properties: "Meteorites such as those found in Murchison are rather massive.
"However, our MARA data suggest that the material on Ryugu is slightly more porous.The research is just beginning, but it is plausible to assume that small fragments of Ryugu would not survive intact at the entrance to the Ryugu. Earth's atmosphere. "
Related Links
MASCOTTE / Hayabusa2 at the DLR
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