"Design and flight results of GNC systems in Hayabusa2 descent operatio" by Go Ono, Fuyuto Terui et al.

Article Title

Design and flight results of GNC systems in Hayabusa2 descent operations

Authors

Keywords

small body exploration, astrodynamics, guidance, navigation, control

Abstract

Hayabusa2 is a Japanese sample return mission from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. TheHayabusa2 spacecraft was launched on December 3, 2014, and reached the asteroid on June27, 2018. It remained there until November 13, 2019 for in situ observation and soil samplecollection and will return to the Earth in November or December 2020. During its stay atthe asteroid, Hayabusa2 performed descent operations 16 times. This paper presents anoverview of a guidance, navigation, and control method used in such descent operations.The method consists of on-board and on-ground guidance systems to control the spacecraftand an image-based navigation technique that uses a shape model and ground control pointsof the asteroid. Flight results in the first touchdown operation are shown as an example,which demonstrate that the method showed a good performance overall and contributed tothe success of the mission.