Utilization of Ka-band Communication for Hayabusa2 Asteroid Proximity Operation

抄録

Hayabusa2 is a Japanese sample return mission from the asteroid Ryugu. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was launched on 3 December 2014, arrived at Ryugu on 27 June 2018. It will stay in proximity of Ryugu until December 2019 for in situ observation and soil sample collection aiming to return to the Earth in December 2020 with the collected sample. During the 1.5-year asteroid proximity operation, the spacecraft performs several numbers of descent operation to deploy and land rovers, and to touchdown collecting soil sample. To obtain large amount of various data during asteroid proximity operation, data downlink from Hayabusa2 is realized using two high gain antennas (HGAs) which are designated to X-band (8GHz) downlink and Ka-band (32GHz) downlink respectively. This paper summarizes Ka-band capability of Hayabusa2 and its contribution to asteroid proximity operation including the Landing Site Selection (LSS) activity. Also, feedbacks for Ka-band equipped future deep space mission are extracted based on the comparison between X/Ka-band operation results.