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In late 2018, the asteroid Ryugu was in the Sun’s shadow during the superior solar conjunction phase. As the Sun-Earth-Ryugu angle decreased to below 3 , the Hayabusa2 spacecraft experienced 21 days of planned blackout in the Earth-probe communication link. This was the first time a spacecraft had experienced solar conjunction while hovering around a minor body. For the safety of the spacecraft, a low energy transfer trajectory named Ayu was designed in the Hill reference frame to increase its altitude from 20 to 110 km. The trajectory was planned with the newly developed optNEAR tool and validated with real time data. This article shows the results of the conjunction operation, from planning to flight data.


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Hayabusa2's superior solar conjunction mission operations: Planning and post-operation results

Show Author's information Stefania Soldini1,2( )Hiroshi Takeuchi2Sho Taniguchi3Shota Kikuchi2Yuto Takei2Go Ono2Masaya Nakano3Takafumi Ohnishi3Takanao Saiki2Yuichi Tsuda2Fuyuto Terui2Naoko Ogawa2Yuya Mimasu2Tadateru Takahashi2Atsushi Fujii2Satoru Nakazawa2Kent Yoshikawa2Yusuke Oki2Chikako Hirose2Hirotaka Sawada2Tomohiro Yamaguchi2,4Makoto Yoshikawa2
Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara 252-5210, Japan
Fujitsu Limited, Tokyo 105-7123, Japan
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Tokyo 100-8310, Japan

Abstract

In late 2018, the asteroid Ryugu was in the Sun’s shadow during the superior solar conjunction phase. As the Sun-Earth-Ryugu angle decreased to below 3 , the Hayabusa2 spacecraft experienced 21 days of planned blackout in the Earth-probe communication link. This was the first time a spacecraft had experienced solar conjunction while hovering around a minor body. For the safety of the spacecraft, a low energy transfer trajectory named Ayu was designed in the Hill reference frame to increase its altitude from 20 to 110 km. The trajectory was planned with the newly developed optNEAR tool and validated with real time data. This article shows the results of the conjunction operation, from planning to flight data.

Keywords: superior solar conjunction, Hayabusa2, Ryugu, hovering satellite, mission operations

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Publication history
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Publication history

Received: 18 January 2020
Accepted: 26 March 2020
Published: 02 November 2020
Issue date: December 2020

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© The Author(s) 2020

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