A Japanese Solar Sail That Launched in 2010 Has Officially Ended Its Mission...

JAXA

End of 15-Year Operation of the Small Scale Solar Powered Sail Demonstration Satellite, IKAROS (News Release)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will complete operations for the Small Scale Solar Powered Sail Demonstration Satellite, IKAROS (the Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) and end the spacecraft's search operations on May 15, 2025. After this date, JAXA will no longer track IKAROS and all operations will end.

IKAROS was launched on May 21, 2010, together with the Venus Climate Orbiter, Akatsuki. IKAROS became the first in the world to successfully demonstrate a solar sail and solar power sail. By December 2011, after achieving all mission goals, the propellant was close to depletion and attitude control was difficult.

IKAROS began to repeatedly enter and exit from hibernation mode (shutdown state).

In order to continue receiving radio signals from IKAROS after the spacecraft woke from hibernation, it was necessary to accurately predict the orbit and attitude movement of the solar sail during the hibernation mode. By searching for IKAROS after waking from hibernation, the validity of this motion model was able to be verified and the accuracy improved. Radio waves were successfully received from IKAROS until the fourth wake-up, but after the spacecraft entered hibernation for the fifth time in May 2015, no radio waves from IKAROS have been detected.

It has been determined that there is only an extremely small possibility of receiving radio signals from IKAROS in the future, and so it has been decided to end operations.

The development, launch and operation of IKAROS was made possible thanks to the support and cooperation of the many participating organizations, and the encouragement from around the world. We are deeply grateful.

Thank you very much.

The achievements of IKAROS will be inherited by a number of upcoming missions. In the area of solar sails, the development of the Powered Innovative Earth-orbiter with Reorientable Inclined Sail (PIERIS) is underway, which aims to demonstrate integrated attitude-orbit control of an ultra-small solar sail. Attitude control using solar pressure torque is currently being carried out or planned for the Extended Mission of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, the next-generation of small body sample return missions, and other explorations in space.

For solar power sails, thin-film solar cell paddles are being developed for application to outer planetary explorers with the OPENS program, as well as other missions.

Although the operation of IKAROS has ended, our mission through the inherited results of the IKAROS spacecraft, is by no means at an end. We believe that the best way to return the support we have received is the continued development of solar sails and solar power sails. We want to thank everyone once again, and we look forward to your support in the future.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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JAXA


JAXA / The Planetary Society (U.S.)

A Major Organic Compound Has Been Found in Rocks from Bennu...

From Lauretta & Connolly et al. (2024) Meteoritics & Planetary Science, doi:10.1111/maps.14227

Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample (News Release - June 26)

Scientists have eagerly awaited the opportunity to dig into the 4.3-ounce (121.6-gram) pristine asteroid Bennu sample collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission since it was delivered to Earth last fall. They hoped the material would hold secrets of the solar system’s past and the prebiotic chemistry that might have led to the origin of life on Earth.

An early analysis of the Bennu sample, published on June 26 in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, demonstrates that this excitement was warranted.

The OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team found that Bennu contains the original ingredients that formed our solar system. The asteroid’s dust is rich in carbon and nitrogen, as well as organic compounds, all of which are essential components for life as we know it.

The sample also contains magnesium-sodium phosphate, which was a surprise to the research team, because it wasn’t seen in the remote sensing data collected by the spacecraft at Bennu. Its presence in the sample hints that the asteroid could have splintered off from a long-gone, tiny, primitive ocean world.

A Phosphate Surprise

Analysis of the Bennu sample unveiled intriguing insights into the asteroid’s composition. Dominated by clay minerals, particularly serpentine, the sample mirrors the type of rock found at mid-ocean ridges on Earth, where material from the mantle, the layer beneath Earth’s crust, encounters water.

This interaction doesn’t just result in clay formation; it also gives rise to a variety of minerals like carbonates, iron oxides and iron sulfides. But the most unexpected discovery is the presence of water-soluble phosphates.

These compounds are components of biochemistry for all known life on Earth today.

While a similar phosphate was found in the asteroid Ryugu sample delivered by JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission in 2020, the magnesium-sodium phosphate detected in the Bennu sample stands out for its purity — that is, the lack of other materials in the mineral — and the size of its grains, unprecedented in any meteorite sample.

The finding of magnesium-sodium phosphates in the Bennu sample raises questions about the geochemical processes that concentrated these elements and provides valuable clues about Bennu’s historic conditions.

“The presence and state of phosphates, along with other elements and compounds on Bennu, suggest a watery past for the asteroid,” said Dante Lauretta, co-lead author of the paper and principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Bennu potentially could have once been part of a wetter world. Although, this hypothesis requires further investigation.”

“OSIRIS-REx gave us exactly what we hoped: a large pristine asteroid sample rich in nitrogen and carbon from a formerly wet world,” said Jason Dworkin, a co-author on the paper and the OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

From a Young Solar System

Despite its possible history of interaction with water, Bennu remains a chemically-primitive asteroid, with elemental proportions closely resembling those of the Sun.

“The sample we returned is the largest reservoir of unaltered asteroid material on Earth right now,” said Lauretta.

This composition offers a glimpse into the early days of our solar system, over 4.5 billion years ago. These rocks have retained their original state, having neither melted nor resolidified since their inception, affirming their ancient origins.

Hints at Life’s Building Blocks

The team has confirmed that the asteroid is rich in carbon and nitrogen. These elements are crucial in understanding the environments where Bennu’s materials originated and the chemical processes that transformed simple elements into complex molecules, potentially laying the groundwork for life on Earth.

“These findings underscore the importance of collecting and studying material from asteroids like Bennu — especially low-density material that would typically burn up upon entering Earth’s atmosphere,” said Lauretta. “This material holds the key to unraveling the intricate processes of solar system formation and the prebiotic chemistry that could have contributed to life emerging on Earth.”

What’s Next

Dozens more labs in the United States and around the world will receive portions of the Bennu sample from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in the coming months, and many more scientific papers describing analyses of the Bennu sample are expected in the next few years from the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team.

“The Bennu samples are tantalizingly beautiful extraterrestrial rocks,” said Harold Connolly, co-lead author on the paper and OSIRIS-REx mission sample scientist at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. “Each week, analysis by the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team provides new and sometimes surprising findings that are helping place important constraints on the origin and evolution of Earth-like planets.”

Launched on September 8, 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft traveled to near-Earth asteroid Bennu and collected a sample of rocks and dust from the surface. OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid, delivered the sample to Earth on September 24, 2023.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona

OSIRIS-REx Has Successfully Brought a Piece of Bennu Back to Earth!

NASA / Keegan Barber

NASA’s First Asteroid Sample Has Landed, Now Secure in Clean Room (Press Release)

After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu is finally on Earth. It landed at 8:52 a.m. MDT (10:52 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, in a targeted area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.

Within an hour and a half, the capsule was transported by helicopter to a temporary clean room set up in a hangar on the training range, where it is now connected to a continuous flow of nitrogen.

Getting the sample under a “nitrogen purge,” as scientists call it, was one of the OSIRIS-REx team’s most critical tasks today. Nitrogen is a gas that doesn’t interact with most other chemicals, and a continuous flow of it into the sample container inside the capsule will keep out earthly contaminants to leave the sample pure for scientific analyses.

The returned samples collected from Bennu will help scientists worldwide make discoveries to better understand planet formation and the origin of organics and water that led to life on Earth, as well as benefit all of humanity by learning more about potentially hazardous asteroids.

“Congratulations to the OSIRIS-REx team on a picture-perfect mission – the first American asteroid sample return in history – which will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation. Not to mention, Bennu is a potentially hazardous asteroid, and what we learn from the sample will help us better understand the types of asteroids that could come our way,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “With OSIRIS-REx, Psyche's launch in a couple of weeks, DART’s one year anniversary, and Lucy’s first asteroid approach in November, Asteroid Autumn is in full swing. These missions prove once again that NASA does big things. Things that inspire us and unite us. Things that show nothing is beyond our reach when we work together.”

The Bennu sample – an estimated 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams – will be transported in its unopened canister by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday, September 25. Curation scientists there will disassemble the canister, extract and weigh the sample, create an inventory of the rocks and dust, and, over time, distribute pieces of Bennu to scientists worldwide.

Today’s delivery of an asteroid sample – a first for the U.S. – went according to plan thanks to the massive effort of hundreds of people who remotely directed the spacecraft’s journey since it launched on September 8, 2016. The team then guided it to arrival at Bennu on December 3, 2018, through the search for a safe sample-collection site between 2019 and 2020, sample collection on October 20, 2020, and during the return trip home starting on May 10, 2021.

“Today marks an extraordinary milestone not just for the OSIRIS-REx team but for science as a whole,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Successfully delivering samples from Bennu to Earth is a triumph of collaborative ingenuity and a testament to what we can accomplish when we unite with a common purpose. But let’s not forget – while this may feel like the end of an incredible chapter, it’s truly just the beginning of another. We now have the unprecedented opportunity to analyze these samples and delve deeper into the secrets of our solar system."

After traveling billions of miles to Bennu and back, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft released its sample capsule towards Earth’s atmosphere at 6:42 a.m. EDT (4:42 a.m. MDT). The spacecraft was 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth’s surface at the time – about one-third the distance from Earth to the Moon.

Traveling at 27,650 mph (44,500 kph), the capsule pierced the atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. EDT (8:42 a.m. MDT), off the coast of California at an altitude of about 83 miles (133 kilometers). Within 10 minutes, it landed on the military range.

Along the way, two parachutes successfully deployed to stabilize and slow the capsule down to a gentle 11 mph (18 kph) at touchdown.

“The whole team had butterflies today, but that’s the focused anticipation of a critical event by a well-prepared team,” said Rich Burns, project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “For us, this was the World Series, ninth inning, bases-loaded moment, and this team knocked it out of the park.”

Radar, infrared and optical instruments in the air and on the ground tracked the capsule to its landing coordinates inside a 36-mile by 8.5-mile (58-kilometer by 14-kilometer) area on the range. Within several minutes, the recovery team was dispatched to the capsule’s location to inspect and retrieve it.

The team found the capsule in good shape at 9:07 a.m. MDT (11:07 a.m. EDT) and then determined that it was safe to approach. Within 70 minutes, they wrapped it up for safe transport to a temporary clean room on the range, where it remains under continuous supervision and a nitrogen purge.

NASA Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. The University of Arizona, Tucson leads the science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing.

Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Curation for OSIRIS-REx, including processing the sample when it arrives on Earth, will take place at NASA Johnson. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (the Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission.

OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

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NASA


NASA TV


NASA / Keegan Barber

Less Than One Month to Go Before Rock Samples from Bennu Return to Earth...

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Conceptual Image Lab

NASA Completes Last OSIRIS-REx Test Before Asteroid Sample Delivery (Press Release - August 30)

A team led by NASA in Utah’s West Desert is in the final stages of preparing for the arrival of the first U.S. asteroid sample – slated to land on Earth in September.

A mockup of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) sample capsule was dropped Wednesday from an aircraft and landed at the drop zone at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range in the desert outside Salt Lake City. This was part of the mission’s final major test prior to arrival of the actual capsule on September 24 with its sample of asteroid Bennu, collected in space almost three years ago.

“We are now mere weeks away from receiving a piece of solar system history on Earth, and this successful drop test ensures we’re ready,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Pristine material from asteroid Bennu will help shed light on the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, and perhaps even on how life on Earth began.”

This drop test follows a series of earlier rehearsals – capsule recovery, spacecraft engineering operations and sample curation procedures – conducted earlier this spring and summer.

Now, with less than four weeks until the spacecraft’s arrival, the OSIRIS-REx team is nearing the end of rehearsals and ready for the actual delivery.

"I am immensely proud of the efforts our team has poured into this endeavor,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Just as our meticulous planning and rehearsal prepared us to collect a sample from Bennu, we have honed our skills for sample recovery.”

The capsule is carrying an estimated 8.8 ounces of rocky material collected from the surface of asteroid Bennu in 2020. Researchers will study the sample in the coming years to learn about how our planet and solar system formed, as well as the origin of organics that may have led to life on Earth.

The capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. EDT (8:42 a.m. MDT), traveling about 27,650 mph. NASA’s live coverage of the capsule landing starts at 10 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. MDT), and will air on NASA Television, the NASA app and the agency’s website.

“We are now in the final leg of this seven-year journey, and it feels very much like the last few miles of a marathon, with a confluence of emotions like pride and joy coexisting with a determined focus to complete the race well,” said Rich Burns, project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Once located and packaged for travel, the capsule will be flown to a temporary clean room on the military range, where it will undergo initial processing and disassembly in preparation for its journey by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the sample will be documented, cared for and distributed for analysis to scientists worldwide.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator.

The university leads the science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing.

Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Curation for OSIRIS-REx, including processing the sample when it arrives on Earth, will take place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (the Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission.

OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Keegan Barber

OSIRIS-REx Is Getting Closer to Earth...

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Conceptual Image Lab

NASA Offers Media Interviews in Utah on Asteroid Sample Return (Press Release - June 28)

NASA invites media to the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground about 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 20, before the agency’s first asteroid sample collected in space is returned to Earth.

The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission, and will arrive via parachute in the Utah desert on September 24.

Media will have the opportunity on July 20 to interview the researchers who provided essential technology that helped OSIRIS-REx capture and store the Bennu sample, as well as learn why NASA selected the Utah desert as the mission’s landing site.

The mission team will also discuss OSIRIS-REx’s landing and recovery operations. Activities for media include a cleanroom facility tour and viewing the sample return capsule training model.

The event is open to U.S. media, who must register online by 5 p.m. MDT on Friday, July 7, for consideration to participate. Check-in at Dugway Proving Ground will be at 8 a.m. on the day of the event.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator.

The university leads the science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations.

Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx, including processing the sample when it arrives on Earth, will take place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission.

OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

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NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona

Japan's Successful Asteroid Explorer Has a New Name...

JAXA

Hayabusa2 Extended Mission Nickname and Logo (News Release)

After delivering the capsule containing a sample from asteroid Ryugu to Earth on December 6, 2020, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft began a new adventure. This additional journey is called the “Hayabusa2 Extended Mission”. As this new mission begins, the original “Hayabusa2 Project” has drawn to a close. With the work for the first mission now complete, the Hayabusa2 Project was dissolved at the end of June 2022, and will be taken over by the Extended Mission. On this occasion, we would like to announce the nickname and logo design for the Hayabusa2 Extended Mission.

The nickname of the Extended Mission is Hayabusa2♯, read “Hayabusa2 Sharp”. The character “♯” is a musical symbol that means “raise the note by a semitone”, and for this mission, it is also the acronym for “Small Hazardous Asteroid Reconnaissance Probe”. This name indicates that the Hayabusa2 Extended Mission is set to investigate small but potentially dangerous asteroids that may collide with the Earth in the future. The English meaning of the word “sharp” also highlights the extremely challenging nature of this mission, which is also reflected in the musical meaning of “raise the note by a semitone”, suggestive of raising of the rank of the mission.

As the character “♯” is a musical symbol, it can be difficult to enter in practice when typing. The symbol can therefore be substituted for the “#” symbol (number sign / pound / hash) that is on computer keyboards or phones. There is no problem with the notation “Hayabusa2♯” (musical symbol) or “Hayabusa2#”.

The next step is the logo design for the Hayabusa2 Extended Mission, which looks like this:


JAXA

The logo depicts the spacecraft departing Earth and heading on a journey to explore two asteroids, 2001 CC₂₁ and 1998 KY₂₆. In addition to spacecraft operations, the Hayabusa2 Extended Mission will conduct three activities: “joint scientific analysis of samples from Hayabusa2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx”, “ready curation facilities to accept the OSIRIS-REx sample”, and “widely disseminate Hayabusa2 science results to the international community”. The four trajectories on the logo show how these activities interact as they proceed. The background shows the sharp character in the form of a star, with the four sharp star shapes also indicating the spacecraft operations with the three activities.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Hayabusa2 Update: The Sample Return Capsule Has Been Opened!

JAXA

Confirmation of the Asteroid Ryugu Sample Collection by the Asteroid Explorer, Hayabusa2 (Press Release - December 14)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is pleased to confirm that samples from asteroid Ryugu have been collected within the sample container inside the re-entry capsule of the asteroid explorer, Hayabusa2.

The Hayabusa2 re-entry capsule was recovered in Woomera, Australia on December 6, 2020 and delivered to the JAXA Sagamihara Campus on December 8. Work then began to open the sample container inside the re-entry capsule. On December 14, a sample of grains of black sand thought to be derived from asteroid Ryugu was confirmed to be inside the sample container. These are believed to be particles attached to the entrance of the sample catcher (the container in which the samples have been stored).

Work will continue with opening the sample catcher that sits in the sample container. The curation and initial analysis team will remove the samples and proceed with the analysis.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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JAXA

Hayabusa2 Update: The Soil Sample from Asteroid Ryugu Has Been Safely Brought Back to Earth!

JAXA

The Results of Hayabusa2 Re-entry Capsule Recovery (Press Release)

On December 6, 2020, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has recovered the body of the capsule, the heat shields, and the parachute of the Hayabusa2 re-entry capsule in the Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA). Tomorrow, the capsule recovery team will extract gas out of the capsule at the operation headquarters in Australia. Researchers considered the gas originates from the precious sample from Asteroid Ryugu.

After the capsule separation, the spacecraft performed trajectory correction maneuvers three times every 30 minutes to depart from the Earth's sphere from 15:30 to 16:30 on December 5 (JST). The Hayabusa2 team members confirmed the trajectory correction maneuvers' success at 16:31 on the same day (JST). The current status of the spacecraft is normal.

We take this opportunity to show our deepest gratitude to the governments of Australia and Japan, NASA, and relevant parties for their cooperation in the recovery of the Hayabusa2 re-entry capsule. Our appreciation extends to the people of Japan and the world for their generous support and encouragement.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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JAXA


JAXA


JAXA

Remnants from One of Our Solar System's Largest Asteroids May Have Been Found on Bennu...

NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx to Asteroid Bennu: “You’ve got a little Vesta on you…” (News Release)

In an interplanetary faux pas, it appears some pieces of asteroid Vesta ended up on asteroid Bennu, according to observations from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The new result sheds light on the intricate orbital dance of asteroids and on the violent origin of Bennu, which is a “rubble pile” asteroid that coalesced from the fragments of a massive collision.

“We found six boulders ranging in size from 5 to 14 feet (about 1.5 to 4.3 meters) scattered across Bennu’s southern hemisphere and near the equator,” said Daniella DellaGiustina of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson. “These boulders are much brighter than the rest of Bennu and match material from Vesta.”

“Our leading hypothesis is that Bennu inherited this material from its parent asteroid after a vestoid (a fragment from Vesta) struck the parent,” said Hannah Kaplan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Then, when the parent asteroid was catastrophically disrupted, a portion of its debris accumulated under its own gravity into Bennu, including some of the pyroxene from Vesta.”

DellaGiustina and Kaplan are primary authors of a paper on this research appearing in Nature Astronomy September 21.

The unusual boulders on Bennu first caught the team’s eye in images from the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) Camera Suite (OCAMS). They appeared extremely bright, with some almost ten times brighter than their surroundings. They analyzed the light from the boulders using the OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS) instrument to get clues to their composition. A spectrometer separates light into its component colors. Since elements and compounds have distinct, signature patterns of bright and dark across a range of colors, they can be identified using a spectrometer. The signature from the boulders was characteristic of the mineral pyroxene, similar to what is seen on Vesta and the vestoids, smaller asteroids that are fragments blasted from Vesta when it sustained significant asteroid impacts.

Of course it’s possible that the boulders actually formed on Bennu’s parent asteroid, but the team thinks this is unlikely based on how pyroxene typically forms. The mineral typically forms when rocky material melts at high-temperature. However, most of Bennu is composed of rocks containing water-bearing minerals, so it (and its parent) couldn’t have experienced very high temperatures. Next, the team considered localized heating, perhaps from an impact. An impact needed to melt enough material to create large pyroxene boulders would be so significant that it would have destroyed Bennu’s parent-body. So, the team ruled out these scenarios, and instead considered other pyroxene-rich asteroids that might have implanted this material to Bennu or its parent.

Observations reveal it’s not unusual for an asteroid to have material from another asteroid splashed across its surface. Examples include dark material on crater walls seen by the Dawn spacecraft at Vesta, a black boulder seen by the Hayabusa spacecraft on Itokawa, and very recently, material from S-type asteroids observed by Hayabusa2 at Ryugu. This indicates many asteroids are participating in a complex orbital dance that sometimes results in cosmic mashups.

As asteroids move through the solar system, their orbits can be altered in many ways, including the pull of gravity from planets and other objects, meteoroid impacts, and even the slight pressure from sunlight. The new result helps pin down the complex journey Bennu and other asteroids have traced through the solar system.

Based on its orbit, several studies indicate Bennu was delivered from the inner region of the Main Asteroid Belt via a well-known gravitational pathway that can take objects from the inner Main Belt to near-Earth orbits. There are two inner Main Belt asteroid families (Polana and Eulalia) that look like Bennu: dark and rich in carbon, making them likely candidates for Bennu’s parent. Likewise, the formation of the vestoids is tied to the formation of the Veneneia and Rheasilvia impact basins on Vesta, at roughly about two billion years ago and approximately one billion years ago, respectively.

“Future studies of asteroid families, as well as the origin of Bennu, must reconcile the presence of Vesta-like material as well as the apparent lack of other asteroid types. We look forward to the returned sample, which hopefully contains pieces of these intriguing rock types,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “This constraint is even more compelling given the finding of S-type material on asteroid Ryugu. This difference shows the value in studying multiple asteroids across the solar system.”

The spacecraft is going to make its first attempt to sample Bennu in October and return it to Earth in 2023 for detailed analysis. The mission team closely examined four potential sample sites on Bennu to determine their safety and science value before making a final selection in December 2019. DellaGiustina and Kaplan’s team thinks they might find smaller pieces of Vesta in images from these close-up studies.

The research was funded by the NASA New Frontiers Program. The primary authors acknowledge significant collaboration with the French space agency CNES on this paper. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. The late Michael Drake of the University of Arizona pioneered the study of vestoid meteorites and was the first principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA is exploring our Solar System and beyond, uncovering worlds, stars, and cosmic mysteries near and far with our powerful fleet of space and ground-based missions.

Source: AsteroidMission.org

Hayabusa2 Update: The Soil Sample from Asteroid Ryugu Will Officially Land in Australia on December 6!

JAXA

The Hayabusa2 Re-entry Capsule Approved to Land in Australia (Press Release)

On August 10, 2020, JAXA was informed that the Authorisation of Return of Overseas-Launched Space Object (AROLSO) for the re-entry capsule from Hayabusa2 was issued by the Australian Government. The date of the issuance is August 6, 2020.

The Hayabusa2 re-entry capsule will return to Earth in South Australia on December 6, 2020 (Japan Time and Australian Time). The landing site will be the Woomera Prohibited Area. The issuance of the AROLSO gave a major step forward for the capsule recovery.

We will continue careful operation for return of Hayabusa2 and recovery of the capsule, and the operation status will be announced in a timely manner.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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Hayabusa2 Update: The Soil Samples from Asteroid Ryugu Will Touch Down in the Land Down Under This December...

JAXA

Joint Statement for Cooperation in the Hayabusa2 Sample Return Mission by the Australian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Press Release - July 14)

The Australian Space Agency (the Agency) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have been in close cooperation on JAXA’s asteroid sample-return mission, Hayabusa2. The sample capsule is planned to land in Woomera, South Australia and the Agency and JAXA are working towards the planned safe re-entry and recovery of the capsule containing the asteroid samples.

Recently, JAXA indicated that 6 December 2020 (Australia/Japan time) is its planned target date for the capsule re-entry and recovery. The Agency and JAXA are working through JAXA’s application for Authorisation of Return of Overseas Launched Space Object (AROLSO), which will need to be approved under the Space Activities Act (1998).

Successfully realizing this epoch-making sample return mission is a great partnership between Australia and Japan and will be a symbol of international cooperation and of overcoming the difficulties and crisis caused by the (COVID-19) pandemic.

Dr. Megan Clark AC
Head, Australian Space Agency
Melbourne, Australia

Dr. Yamakawa Hiroshi
President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Tokyo, Japan

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Farewell, Asteroid Ryugu: Hayabusa2 Is Now Headed Back to Earth!

JAXA, Chiba Institute of Technology and collaborators

Hayabusa2 Departs from Ryugu (Press Release)

JAXA confirmed Hayabusa2, JAXA's asteroid explorer, left the target asteroid Ryugu.

On November 13, 2019, JAXA operated Hayabusa2 chemical propulsion thrusters for the spacecraft's orbit control. The confirmation of the Hayabusa2 departure made at 10:05 a.m. (Japan Standard Time, JST) was based on the following data analyses:

·The thruster operation of Hayabusa2 occurred nominally
·The velocity leaving from Ryugu is approximately 9.2 cm/s
·The status of Hayabusa2 is normal

We are planning to conduct performance tests of onboard instruments, including the electric propulsion system, for the return to Earth.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Hayabusa2 Has Collected More Samples from the Surface of Asteroid Ryugu!

JAXA

Success of the Second Touchdown of Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa 2 (Press Release)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) performed a series of operations for the second touchdown of Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa2 on the Ryugu asteroid and the collection of its soil samples.

From the data sent from Hayabusa2, it has been confirmed that the touchdown sequence, including the discharge of a projectile for sampling, was completed successfully. Hayabusa2 is functioning normally, and thus the second touchdown ended with success.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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And there is a 10x time-lapse video captured by CAM-H images during the second target marker separation. The first frame shows the target marker immediately after separation. https://t.co/z3oZuZ85RB pic.twitter.com/Z2kimYim15

— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) July 8, 2019

Hayabusa2 Update: Asteroid Ryugu Has a New Man-made Crater...

JAXA, The University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, The University of Aizu, AIST

Successful Operation of Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa2's SCI (Press Release - April 25)

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) separated the SCI (Small Carry-on Impactor), which had been onboard the asteroid explorer Hayabusa2, on April 5, 2019, for deployment to Ryugu, and then put the SCI into operation.

As a result of checking the images captured by the Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic (ONC-T) onboard the asteroid explorer Hayabusa2, we have concluded that a crater was created by the SCI.

Hayabusa2 is operating normally.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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This video shows the descent of the SCI (Small Carry-on Impactor) made from images captured at 2 second intervals just after separation from Hayabusa2 by the onboard TIR (Thermal Infrared Camera). In the background, you can see the surface of Ryugu 500m away. pic.twitter.com/O5niPDb2XI

— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) April 21, 2019

Hayabusa2 Update: Japan Has Successfully 'Bombed' Asteroid Ryugu (For Science)!

JAXA, Kobe University, Chiba Institute of Technology, The University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Kochi University, Aichi Toho University, The University of Aizu, and Tokyo University of Science

Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa2’s SCI Put into Operation (Press Release)

The National Research and Development Agency's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) separated the SCI (Small Carry-on Impactor) onboard the asteroid explorer Hayabusa2 for deployment to Ryugu and put the SCI into operation.

After the start of the operation, the camera (DCAM3) separated from Hayabusa2 captured an image that shows ejection from Ryugu’s surface, which implies that the SCI had functioned as planned.

Hayabusa2 is operating normally. We will be providing further information once we have confirmed whether a crater has been created on Ryugu.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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JAXA

Hayabusa2 Finally Grabs Rock Samples from the Surface of Asteroid Ryugu!

JAXA

Hayabusa2 Latest Status, the Successful First Touchdown (Press Release)

The National Research and Development Agency's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) executed the asteroid explorer Hayabusa2 operation to touch down on the surface of the target asteroid Ryugu for sample retrieval.

Data analysis from Hayabusa2 confirms that the sequence of operation proceeded, including shooting a projectile into the asteroid to collect its sample material. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft is in nominal state. This marks the Hayabusa2's successful touchdown on Ryugu.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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JAXA

The Final Post of 2018: Reliving 2008 (and then some)...

Just thought I'd end this year by pointing out how 2018 reminded me of 2008...a year that I look back on favorably for personal reasons. 2008 was memorable because a spacecraft carrying a DVD that bears my name (NASA's Phoenix lander) successfully touched down on Mars, I attended my 10-year high school reunion in Pasadena, CA, I went to Florida and took part in a cruise (to the Bahamas) for the first time, and I did so many viewings of The Dark Knight in movie theaters because it was such an awesome film.


SpaceX

In regards to 2018, my name landed on Mars for the third time (via two small microchips aboard the InSight spacecraft over a month ago; my name is also on the Curiosity rover as it safely arrived at the Red Planet in 2012), I attended a dinner cruise in Newport Beach, CA, to mark my 20-year high school reunion two months ago, I went to Florida and took part in a second cruise (to the Panama Canal and other locales in Central America) last March, and I watched The Dark Knight in Universal City (twice during the summer) after the movie was theatrically re-released for its 10-year anniversary.


JAXA

Along with the highlights listed above, this entry also includes some non-personal events as well as cool, exciting activities that I did this year [namely, going skydiving in San Diego County for my 39th birthday (as shown in the pic at the very top of this entry)...and finally meeting 5-time NBA champ Kobe Bryant (as shown in the image at the bottom of this post)]. Check out the photos throughout this entry...and have a safe and happy New Year!

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MARS LANDINGS

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA's Phoenix lander arrival (at Mars' north polar region): May 25, 2008

NASA's InSight lander arrival (at Elysium Planitia): November 26, 2018


NASA / JPL - Caltech

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THE DARK KNIGHT


1st Theatrical Viewing: July 18, 2008

1st Theatrical Viewing (for 10-year anniversary release): August 26, 2018

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OLYMPICS


2008 Summer Games (in Beijing, China): August 8 - 24, 2008

2018 Winter Games (in Pyeongchang, South Korea): February 9 - 25, 2018


Chang W. Lee / The New York Times

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CARIBBEAN CRUISES


Bahamas cruise (from Fort Lauderdale, Florida): August 13 - 18, 2008

Panama Canal cruise (from Miami, Florida): March 11 - 23, 2018

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CLASS OF 1998 REUNIONS


10-year high school reunion (in Pasadena, CA): October 25, 2008

20-year high school reunion (in Newport Beach, CA): October 6, 2018

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And lastly, it only took 11 years to meet the Mamba...on October 23, 2018!

Hayabusa2 Update: My Name Is On An Asteroid!

JAXA

Earlier today, Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully conducted a third touchdown rehearsal at asteroid Ryugu in preparation for a sample retrieval attempt that will occur sometime early next year. During the rehearsal, Hayabusa2 got as close as 39 feet (12 meters) to the surface—before ascending to a home position more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) above Ryugu. During this third rehearsal, Hayabusa2 released a target marker (one of five that it is equipped with) that helped track the orbiter's distance from the asteroid's surface. While successfully being a vital navigation aid for Japan's robotic probe, the target marker served another awesome purpose.


JAXA

Inside each of the five target markers aboard Hayabusa2 is a film strip containing the names of 180,000 people...including me! These names were submitted online between April and August of 2013. Along with Mars (courtesy of the Phoenix lander, the Curiosity rover and hopefully InSight when it arrives at the Red Planet on November 26), Ryugu is now the second planetary body beyond Earth in our solar system that I have a virtual presence on. So cool! When Hayabusa2 departs from Ryugu in December of next year to return samples back to Earth (in December of 2020), at least two target markers will be left behind on the asteroid's surface. And Ryugu will continue its 475-day orbit around the Sun with 180,000 monikers gracing its soil. Okay, I'll stop waxing poetic for now. Happy Thursday!


JAXA