SHARC- SCIFLI Hayabusa 2 Airborne Re-entry Observation Campaign
Asteroid Explorer “Hayabusa2” is a successor of “Hayabusa” (MUSES-C), which revealed several new technologies and returned to Earth in June 2010.
While establishing a new navigation method using ion engines, Hayabusa brought back samples from the asteroid “Itokawa” to help elucidate the origin of the solar system. Hayabusa2 will target a C-type asteroid “Ryugu” to study the origin and evolution of the solar system as well as materials for life by leveraging the experience acquired from the Hayabusa mission.
To learn more about the origin and evolution of the solar system, it is important to investigate typical types of asteroids, namely S-, C-, and D-type asteroids. A C-type asteroid, which is a target of Hayabusa2, is a more primordial body than Itokawa, which is an S-type asteroid, and is considered to contain more organic or hydrated minerals -- although both S- and C- types have lithologic characteristics. Minerals and seawater which form the Earth as well as materials for life are believed to be strongly connected in the primitive solar nebula in the early solar system, thus we expect to clarify the origin of life by analyzing samples acquired from a primordial celestial body such as a C-type asteroid to study organic matter and water in the solar system and how they coexist while affecting each other.
The ESPO team will be supporting the observations of the re-entry of the Hayabusa2 Sample Return Capsule. Using the LaRC and JSC G-IIIs and multiple instruments, the objective is to acquire data from a flight experiment of an atmospheric entry system. The data from the observation are radiometric and spectroradiometric emission signatures of the re-entry fireball, staring camera video, and the reconstructed, as flown trajectory of the Sample Return Capsule.