Identifying the exact locations of the close-up images obtained by the Hayabusa spacecraft to understand the states of the gravels

Abstract

In November, 2005, the Hayabusa spacecraft successfully touch-downed at the smooth terrain of the asteroid, Itokawa, whose longest axis is as small as ~500m. At the decent phase for the touch down and its rehearsals, more than 30 unprecedentedly high-resolution images are obtained at different locations/areas of Itokawa. The widths of some of these images are too narrow, which required significant effort in estimating their exact locations. In this talk, we will report how we rectified these images into low-resolution images and briefly discuss geological characteristics apparent on these images.