A Japanese Mother ship Probe, Is Closing in on an Asteroid 180 Million Miles from Earth

Hayabusa2 left Earth in 2014 and is scheduled to arrive at Ryugu — which is about 180 million miles (290 million km) from Earth at the moment — Wednesday (June 27) or thereabouts.

Eventually, the mothership will deploy a total of three rovers and a lander onto Ryugu's surface continue reading: https://www.space.com/40987-japan-hayabusa2-asteroid-probe-closes-on-ryugu.html



Hayabusa 2/MASCOT mission: https://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10976/1756_read-23829/#/gallery/11288



From DLR:

Timeline

Launch of Hayabusa2 spacecraft	3 December 2014
Health check of the MASCOT lander	June 2015
Calibration of MASCOT instruments	September 2015
Earth fly-by	December 2015
Health check of the MASCOT lander	July 2016
Calibration of MASCOT instruments	November 2016
Health check of the MASCOT lander	May 2017
Calibration of MASCOT instruments	November 2017
Health check of the MASCOT lander	Spring 2018
Hayabusa2 arrives at asteroid	June/July 2018 18-month long stay
MASCOT lands on asteroid Ryugu	Between 1 and 4 October 2018
Hayabusa2 collects samples of the asteroid during a short ground contact (possibly several times)	2019
Hayabusa2 to depart from asteroid	November/December 2019
Hayabusa2 to arrive at Earth	Late 2020

Hayabusa2 spacecraft, Specifications/Instruments

Type of mission	Asteroid sample return mission
Operator	JAXA
Launch date	3  December 2014, 04:22 UTC
Launch site	Yoshinobu Launch Complex, Tanegashima Space Center
Rocket	H-IIA 202 (Flugnummer F26)
Mission length	6 years, return planned for December 2020
Mission control centre	JAXA SSOC (Sagamihara Space Operations Center)
MASCOT control centre	DLR Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC)
Launch mass	approx. 600 kilograms
Key features
Electric Propulsion System (Ion engine)	Used for changing orbit during journey to asteroid as well as return to Earth; engine is energy-efficient, with one tenth of power consumption compared to chemical propellant
Sampler mechanism	SMP to collect samples from surface of asteroid. Cylinder-shaped sampler horn will be lowered to surface, shooting out a small projectile once it makes contact with the surface. Materials ejected will then be collected via a catcher
Target markers	Five beanbag-type markers will descend to the asteroid's surface to serve as artificial landmarks prior to landing for the distance measurement of teh collision warning syst. The target markers are hollow and filled with a granulate that dampens the kinetic energy and thus prevents them from bouncing from the surface.
Re-entry capsule	Container that stores samples from asteroid and will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at 12 kilometres per second.
Mission instruments
Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI)	Two-kilogram copper lump to collide with surface of asteroid to make an artificial crater, used to study the inside structure of the asteroid before and after impact; will also be used to sample 'fresh' material underground
Near InfraRed Spectrometer (NIRS3) and Thermal Infrared Imager (TIR)	Remote sensing instruments to measure asteroid from Hayabusa2’s 20 kilometre-distance position. NIRS3 will investigate mineral and water metamorphism; TIR to study temperature and thermal inertia of asteroid
MINERVA-II	3 small rovers that will study the asteroid from its surface.
MASCOT	Small lander that will study the asteroid using four observation devices and that will hop to three locations on the asteroid

MASCOT lander specifications/Instruments 

Dimensions	295 mm x 275 mm x 195 mm
Weight	9.6 kilograms
Target asteroid	162173 Ryugu
Mother craft	Hayabusa2
Operators	DLR, CNES, JAXA
Instruments
MASCOT Camera (MASCAM)	Wide-angle camera that takes pictures during the descent to the asteroid surface and will provide ground data for the instruments on board Hayabusa2 as well as contextual information for the instruments on board MASCOT. (Institute of Planetary Research, DLR)
MASCOT Radiometer (MARA)	The radiometer is used for the high-resolution determination of the surface temperature as well as the thermal changes during the day-night changes on the asteroid. (Institute of Planetary Research, DLR)
Magnetometer (MAG)	Determination of the asteroid's magnetic field (Institute of Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics, TU Braunschweig)
Infrared spectrometer (MicrOmega)	Determination of the mineralogical composition of the asteroid surface. (Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, Université Paris Sud)

The target: Asteroid (162173) Ryugu (formerly 1999 JU3)

Origin	C-class asteroid (carbon-rich), near-Earth asteroid of the Apollo group
Discovery	May 1999
Discoverer	LINEAR (Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research) Team
Shape	Approximately spherical with the irregularities expected in small bodies (determined by thermal observations.
Diameter	880 ± 15 metres
Rotation period	7.6 hours
Albedo	0.05 (very low, darker than coal)