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This paper describes the orbit design of the deployable payload Rover 2 of MINERVA-II, installed on the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. Because Rover 2 did not have surface exploration capabilities, the operation team decided to experiment with a new strategy for its deployment to the surface. The rover was ejected at a high altitude and made a semi-hard landing on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu after several orbits. Based on the orbital analysis around Ryugu, the expected collision speed was tolerable for the rover to function post-impact. Because the rover could not control its position, its motion was entirely governed by the initial conditions. Thus, the largest challenge was to insert the rover into a stable orbit (despite its large release uncertainty), and avoid its escape from Ryugu due to an environment strongly perturbed by solar radiation pressure and gravitational irregularities. This study investigates the solution space of the orbit around Ryugu and evaluates the orbit’s robustness by utilizing Monte Carlo simulations to determine the orbit insertion policy. Upon analyzing the flight data of the rover operation, we verified that the rover orbited Ryugu for more than one period and established the possibility of a novel method for estimating the gravity of an asteroid.


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Orbit insertion strategy of Hayabusa2’s rover with large release uncertainty around the asteroid Ryugu

Show Author's information Yusuke Oki1( )Kent Yoshikawa2Hiroshi Takeuchi2Shota Kikuchi2Hitosi Ikeda2Daniel J. Scheeres3Jay W. McMahon3Junichiro Kawaguchi2Yuto Takei2Yuya Mimasu2Naoko Ogawa2Go Ono2Fuyuto Terui2Manabu Yamada4Toru Kouyama5Shingo Kameda6Kazuya Yoshida7Kenji Nagaoka8Tetsuo Yoshimitsu2Takanao Saiki2Yuichi Tsuda2
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tsukuba 305-8505, Japan
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara 252-5210, Japan
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
Planetary Exploration Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology, Narashino 275-0016, Japan
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Koto-ku 135-0064, Japan
Rikkyo University, Toshima-ku 171-8501, Japan
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan
Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kitakyusyu 804-8550, Japan

Abstract

This paper describes the orbit design of the deployable payload Rover 2 of MINERVA-II, installed on the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. Because Rover 2 did not have surface exploration capabilities, the operation team decided to experiment with a new strategy for its deployment to the surface. The rover was ejected at a high altitude and made a semi-hard landing on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu after several orbits. Based on the orbital analysis around Ryugu, the expected collision speed was tolerable for the rover to function post-impact. Because the rover could not control its position, its motion was entirely governed by the initial conditions. Thus, the largest challenge was to insert the rover into a stable orbit (despite its large release uncertainty), and avoid its escape from Ryugu due to an environment strongly perturbed by solar radiation pressure and gravitational irregularities. This study investigates the solution space of the orbit around Ryugu and evaluates the orbit’s robustness by utilizing Monte Carlo simulations to determine the orbit insertion policy. Upon analyzing the flight data of the rover operation, we verified that the rover orbited Ryugu for more than one period and established the possibility of a novel method for estimating the gravity of an asteroid.

Keywords: solar radiation pressure, augmented elliptic Hill three-body problem, gravitational irregularity

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 21 January 2020
Accepted: 07 April 2020
Published: 05 November 2020
Issue date: December 2020

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2020

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant (No. 18H01628).

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