MessageToEagle.com – On 3 October 2018, the German-French MASCOT lander (the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout) was successfully ejected at an altitude of 51 meters from the Japanese Hayabusa2 space probe and descended in free fall to the surface of the asteroid Ryugu and began to work.
“It could not have gone better,” explained MASCOT project manager Tra-Mi Ho from the DLR Institute of Space Systems in a press release.
“From the lander’s telemetry, we were able to see that it separated from the mothercraft, and made contact with the asteroid surface approximately 20 minutes later.” The team is now in contact with the lander.
The near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, located approximately 300 million kilometers from Earth and on its surface, the lander will conduct measurements, analyse the asteroid’s surface properties, including its magnetic field and mineral composition.
The moment of separation was one of the risks of the mission but everything went smoothly: Already during the descent on the asteroid, the camera switched MASCAM on and took 20 pictures, which are now stored on board the Japanese space probe.
“The camera worked perfectly,” says Ralf Jaumann, DLR planetary scientist and scientific director of the camera instrument. “The team’s first images of the camera are therefore safe.”
The magnetometer team was also able to recognize in the data sent by MASCOT that the MASMAG instrument had switched on and performed measurements prior to the separation.
“The measurements show the relatively weak field of the solar wind and the very strong magnetic disturbances caused by the spacecraft,” explains Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier from the Technical University of Braunschweig.
“At the moment of the separation, we expected a clear decrease of the interference field – and we were able to recognize this clearly.”
MASCOT came to rest on the surface approximately 20 minutes after the separation. Now, the team is analysing the data that MASCOT is sending to Earth to understand the events occurring on the asteroid Ryugu.
The lander should now be on the asteroid’s surface, in the correct position thanks to its swing arm, and have started to conduct measurements independently. Once MASCOT has performed all planned measurements, it is expected to hop to another measuring location. This is the first time that scientists will receive data from different locations on an asteroid.
“With MASCOT, we have the unique opportunity to study the Solar System’s most primordial material directly on an asteroid,” said DLR planetary researcher Ralf Jaumann.
With the data acquired by MASCOT and the samples that Hayabusa2 brings to Earth from Ryugu in 2020, scientists will not only learn more about asteroids, but more about the formation of the Solar System.
“Asteroids are very primordial celestial bodies.”
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