Post-Flight Analysis of Recovered Components of Hayabusa2 Sample Return Capsule

Abstract

The asteroid explorer Hayabusa2 returned to the earth after 6 years of interplanetary voyage in Dec, 2020. After separated from the spacecraft, the sample return capsule (SRC) entered the earth atmosphere and passed through excessively severe aerodynamic heating at the velocity of about 12 km/s. Finally SRC successfully landed on the ground in the Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA), South Australia on Dec. 5th (UTC). The present paper overviews the reentry operation and the post-flight analysis of the Hayabusa2 SRC. The post-flight analysis program is currently still underway and is mainly comprised of the following three activities; 1) Reproduction of the best estimated trajectory (BET) based on the reentry orbit determination, ground observations, the SRC landing point and the atmospheric properties on the reentry day. 2) Analysis of flight parameters regarding vehicle dynamics during reentry and aerodynamic heating by using flight data recorded by the reentry flight measurement module (REMM) installed in the SRC. 3) Nonintrusive inspection of the recovered heatshields through X-ray CT-scanning and 3-dimensional laser-scanning. These activities will be finally integrated and studied for the SRC design validation purposes and for better understanding of the flight results.