MISSION PROFILE Progress report
Since its arrival at Ryugu, Hayabusa2 has been busy. It is testament to the whole Hayabusa2 team that they have not only sent a space probe to Ryugu – which is extremely difficult given the asteroid’s minute gravity – but they have also successfully released the MINERVAII-1 rovers and the MASCOT lander. Watanabe provided us with an update of the mission, saying: “We have done global mapping of Ryugu using an optical camera with seven-band filters, the Near-Infrared Spectrometer, the Thermal-Infrared Imager and a laser altimeter. Several descent observations, including gravity measurement, were also done. We deployed two rovers, MINERVA-II-1A, and -1B, in September, and lander MASCOT today [3 October 2018].”
The inflation in worldwide news concerning Hayabusa2 has come because of its impressive accomplishment, and…
