On September 24, 2023, the OSIRIS-Rex mission successfully delivered a sample of the asteroid Bennu to Earth.

This book allows the general reader to learn more about this fascinating world. Bennu 3-D: Anatomy of an Asteroid chronicles the mission and highlights features of the asteroid. The book’s back cover includes a 3D viewer with which the reader may view the stereo images taken by the spacecraft while it orbited Bennu.

Bennu is the most studied asteroid to date, a seventy-three billion kilogram globe of rubble held together by tenuous gravity. Over months, NASA’s un-crewed OSIRIS-REx spacecraft mapped its surface features to a precision of five centimeters per pixel.

This is a very foreign world. Walking upon the surface would be akin to stepping into a playpen of plastic balls. Regolith tends to slide ‘uphill’ towards the bulging equator because the centrifugal forces are nearly as strong as the low gravity there. As well, OSIRIS has detected organic molecules, implying that earlier Earth-colliding asteroids could have contributed to the origin of life. But, this asteroid may also become a destroyer of life. Bennu’s orbit crosses that of the Earth with a ‘slight’ chance of impacting our planet in 2182. Such a collision would release more energy than three times all the nuclear weapon detonations in history.

The book begins with a primer about asteroids. In particular, one section highlights the Yarkovsky effect, when sunlight affects the motion of asteroids. Next, chapter 2 introduces the sample and return mission, covering the extensive flight systems of the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer. This seven-year mission launched on September 8, 2016 and involved an Earth slingshot maneuver in order to match the plane of Bennu’s orbital inclination. After orbital insertion, the spacecraft continually circled Bennu in a manner akin to weaving a virtual web in order to map the asteroid’s surface.

Chapter 3 describes Bennu itself, such as how the asteroid’s composition is determined by spectral emission techniques. Science has hypothesized that Bennu, with a nominal diameter of 484 meters, originated from a larger asteroid in orbit between Jupiter and Mars. About a billion years ago, a collision shattered this large asteroid to form smaller asteroids such as Bennu, consisting of fragments that have coalesced into a rubble pile held together by microgravity. Eventually, with the assistance of the fore-mentioned Yarkovsky effect, gravitational resonance flung Bennu towards its present-day Earth-crossing orbit. Pending collisions with Earth, Venus or Mercury, Bennu’s ultimate fate will be to spiral towards the Sun.

The following chapter extensively highlights various ‘named’ features photographed in high resolution, being larger boulders or craters. For instance, the boulder BenBen Saxum, at nearly forty meters high, protrudes well above the horizon. Another chapter takes the reader through an extensive search for a suitable sampling site. Prior to launch, the mission planners had designed for a suitable sandy site. Alas, upon arriving at Bennu, no such site was to be found. Few offered sufficient clearance from obstacles and larger rocks which could jam the sampling mechanism. Eventually a primary and backup site was chosen. The latter was necessary because an initial failure would stir up too much debris for another attempt at the same site.

A highlight of the OSIRIS mission was using the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) when the spacecraft collected a sample of rock and dust. After a time-consuming descent and several adjustments, the TAGSAM touched down to penetrate the regolith and fired a burst of nitrogen gas to agitate the surface, hence directing regolith particles into a collection head. Six seconds later, after firing thrusters to begin the ascent, Bennu’s surface was disturbed even more than expected. Operations were fully autonomous. At mission’s end, a capsule would break away from the craft to return the sample to Earth’s surface (we now know successfully).

The final chapter, titled Atlas of Bennu, overviews the data collection methodology for building the basemap made from stitching together over two thousand images, while taking into account lighting, surface reflectivity and other factors. Following the chapter are twenty-eight high resolution photograph sections which make up the basemap.

The book contains extensive references, such as a surface features index, tables of Bennu’s properties, a list of references, and a glossary. Primary author Danate Lauretta is a Regents Professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, and Brian May is a visiting researcher of astrophysics and astronomy at Imperial College London (he is also the lead guitarist for Queen!). Carina Bennett, Kenneth Coles, Claudia Manzoni and Catherine Wolner have also contributed. This atlas, in this reviewer’s opinion, serves brilliantly as a treasured reference for armchair travelling among the asteroids.

© 2023 Peter Spasov

NSS index of over 400 book reviews

Title: “Asteroid Autumn: Three Missions. Three Targets”
Date and Time: Monday, October 16. 5:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time
Location: DMACC West Campus, 5959 Grand Ave., West Des Moines
Join Zoom Meeting: https://DMACC.zoom.us/j/95123855678
Meeting ID: 951 2385 5678

NASA has declared September, October, and November “Asteroid Autumn,” as three missions to Solar System asteroids have major milestones. The OSIRIS-REx mission recently returned its sample of Near Earth Asteroid “Bennu” to Earth, and it continues on an extended mission to asteroid Apophis, renamed OSIRIS-APEX. A second mission, Psyche, is set to launch between October 12 and October 25 to the large Main Belt Asteroid 16 Psyche, the first visit to a metal asteroid. Then, in early November, the Lucy mission to the Trojan Asteroids orbiting with planet Jupiter will encounter Main Belt asteroid Dinkinesh on November 1 to test and calibrate its equipment on the way to its ultimate targets.

Dan Hoy has a keen interest in small bodies of the Solar System, and recently returned from a two-day experience witnessing the return of the OSIRIS-REx mission’s asteroid sample. Dan served as one of twelve social media influencers selected by spacecraft fabricator and operator Lockheed Martin to tour its facilities, hear from mission personnel, watch the mission’s final hours, and share the excitement on social media. Dan will share highlights of the three “Asteroid Autumn” missions, as well as some other recent and future expeditions to asteroids.

Image: Visualizing the trajectories through the solar system of asteroids discovered by ADAM. Credits: B612 Asteroid Institute, University of Washington DiRAC Institute, and OpenSpace Project.

NSS of North Texas welcomed Joachim Moeyens, Graduate Student Fellow of the Asteroid Institute and Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology (DiRAC) Institute, who presented “The B612 Foundation and their Search for Asteroids.” The Asteroid Institute, a program of the private, non-profit B612 Foundation, uses the Asteroid Discovery, Analysis, and Mapping (ADAM) as their primary platform. Moeyens packed his presentation with dynamic observation images.

Moeyens highlighted the parameters of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time that will be conducted by the Rubin Observatory in the Chilean Andes and explained the science that this observatory aims to accomplish while continuously taking images for 10 years. He outlined the projection of a meaningful number of discoveries — at times exceeding 30,000 asteroids discovered nightly (majority are main belt asteroids). The timeline for reporting new observations of known solar system objects will be 60 seconds and newly discovered asteroids and comets will be 24 hours. Moeyens explained how an asteroid’s movement observed as “tracklets” can be used for their discovery and how Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery (THOR) transforms observations to simplify asteroid discovery with 97.2% accuracy and greater than a 2x increase in the recovery of known objects compared to tracklet-based algorithms. THOR was integrated into the ADAM platform and used to make the foundations of an asteroid discovery service.

Image: Photo of the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos seconds before the DART spacecraft crashed into it. Courtesy NASA.

The National Space Society lauds NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Mission on a successful rendezvous and impact with Dimorphos, a moonlet orbiting the asteroid Didymos. The DART mission, which is a project of the Johns Hopkins University Advanced Physics Laboratory, was the first test of any technique to divert an asteroid, and will help us better understand how to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision with Earth.

NSS CEO Anita Gale observed: “The DART mission is helping us understand how to do one of those tasks that we hope we never have to do, but we absolutely must know how to do if a killer asteroid comes our way. DART is demonstrating how a small nudge can, if we get the results we plan on, change the trajectory of an asteroid.”

The DART spacecraft is just 1200 pounds in mass and, as one NASA official put it, “it’s like ramming a golf cart into the Great Pyramid.” Nevertheless, the impact is expected to alter the trajectory and speed of Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos sufficiently to be observable from Earth. While this change will be minimal, it will prove the kinetic impactor technique for changing an asteroid’s trajectory. While neither asteroid is currently a threat to Earth, the Didymos/Dimorphous pair was selected due to the moonlet’s small size and mass, and the ability to measure changes in its orbit around Didymos quickly.

”DART is an important step toward a complete planetary defense capability, but without the ability to find all dangerous asteroids and comets, it will not be that useful,” said Dale Skran, NSS COO. “That’s why NSS is focused on getting funding for the Near-Earth Object Surveyor infrared telescope (NEO Surveyor).”

NASA estimates that some 25,000 large asteroids inhabit the inner solar system, and many could one day pose a threat to Earth. The meteor that caused such widespread damage in Chelyabinsk in 2013 was only 60 feet in diameter; many of the larger ones are city-killers and worse. NASA and the U.S. Air Force track fewer than half of the largest bodies, and with our ground-based telescopes, it could take 30 or more years to find the rest. The proposed NEO Surveyor orbiting telescope will specialize in finding large asteroids and could cut that time by two-thirds. It is urgently important that it be fully funded—we can’t stop impacts from asteroids we can’t see. Learn more about how to support this critically important mission here.

The National Space Society has been a leader in calling for the protection of Earth from space-borne objects for decades. For more information on our efforts in planetary defense, see the NSS planetary defense page.

By Jonathan Dagle, NSS Planetary Defense Program Manager

Asteroids have been striking the Earth for millions of years, and it is only a matter of “when” the next impact will occur, not “if.” Since the early 2000’s terrestrial observations have made considerable progress, locating nearly all the potentially hazardous asteroids more than 1 km across, about 1,000 in total, by 2010. These objects are so large that an Earth-impact would likely be an extinction-level event. However, smaller asteroids with diameters down to 140 meters, or smaller, still pose a regional danger, with potential destruction exceeding a handful of nuclear weapons. NASA estimates more than 25,000 of these asteroids exist, and as of January 2023, 60% of them have yet to be located. Since 2006 there has been interest a space-based infrared telescope to locate and track these hazardous objects, and in 2019, NASA approved the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission (NEOSM).

NSS has been working hard to avert catastrophic budget cuts to NEOSM that could jeopardize the mission’s success. Over the past two months, NSS members and leadership have met with offices of key Congressmen and the directors of relevant committees to oppose these cuts and restore the full funding for NEOSM, a space telescope designed to detect, track, and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids. It had been selected by NASA to proceed in 2019, more than ten years since inception, and was on track to launch as early as 2026.

But the President’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2023 would slash $100 million from NEOSM and delay launch by at least two years. The Administration and NASA followed up by requesting Congress take-back additional current-year funds that were only signed into law in March 2022. NSS believes the combined effect of these cuts could be disastrous for the NEO Surveyor Mission.

NEOSM is both too important and too small for these cuts to make sense. They appear to be NASA’s attempt to fix overruns in “flagship” planetary science missions like Europa Clipper and Mars Sample Return. But neither of these support a mission directed in law, as does NEOSM. And raiding the NEOSM “cookie jar,” won’t fix the flagship overruns—their overruns for just one year are about the size of the entire NEOSM mission! So breaking NEOSM doesn’t even begin to fix the flagship mission problem.

Unlike most planetary science missions, NEOSM provides a direct benefit to everyone on Earth. Congress understood this when they assigned the mission to NASA in 2005. More recently Dr. Phil Christensen, Co-Chair of 2023 Decadal Survey, called NEOSM “extremely important for society, for the world,” and said NEOSM is “crucial to the people here on the Earth. … We continue to urge NASA and Congress to ensure the mission is funded and launched in a timely fashion.”

To make matters worse, NASA has acknowledged that ground-based observations of near-Earth objects is getting more difficult because of the current and expected growth in low-Earth orbit “mega-constellations.” This concern is echoed in the 2023 Decadal Survey. Yet in the face of degraded observations, NASA’s answer is to delay NEOSM and even put the program at risk.

Unfortunately, NASA does not seem to view NEOSM as important. This may largely come down to bureaucracy. NEOSM belongs to the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, a small office in the Planetary Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate. Only one of those organizations doesn’t have “science” in its name. The Decadal Survey notwithstanding, NASA doesn’t view detecting potentially hazardous asteroids as “sciencey.” The Planetary Science Division wants to explore Mars and send probes to the gas-giants. Flashy programs get the most attention in the press and in budget meetings. Telescopes looking for dark asteroids don’t compete well in terms of prestige, excitement, or money.

The idea that NEOSM can be the piggy-bank for flagship cost overruns doesn’t add up. The entire cost of NEOSM is in the ballpark of $500 million. According to a NASA report in 2020, the costs of Mars Sample Return was expected to reach up to $4.4 billion, an increase of more than $1 billion over earlier estimates. And Europa Clipper received $600 million in one year, enough to fund the entire NEOSM program. It’s as if NASA doesn’t want to buy batteries for their smoke detectors, to help pay for a new car.

Sign up here for the NSS Campaign to Save NEOSM.

Sign up now because we need to take these actions before Congress marks up the FY23 budget on June 28th. Also, contact your Senators and Representatives directly. Tell them Asteroid Defense is important to you, and ask them to restore NEOSM’s funding (totaling $170 million in FY23) so it stays on schedule to launch as early as 2026.

Approximate path of asteroid 2019 OK past the Earth on 25 July 2019. Graphic produced by author from NASA-JPL Small-Body Database.

You can’t develop or settle that which is not yet explored, so there is a synergistic relationship between planetary probes, especially missions to the Moon, asteroids, and Mars, and future space development and settlement. Of course, in the longer term the entire solar system is a destination for settlement, but focusing on the Moon, the asteroids, and Mars in 2021 seems appropriate.  Let’s review the year by mission target.

The Moon was not a popular destination in 2021. The only notable mission activity was the Chinese “Chang’e 5”, the orbiter component of which was captured by the Sun-Earth L1 point on March 15th, 2021, becoming the first Chinese spacecraft to do so.  The purpose of the extended mission appears to be on-going testing of maneuvering capability, since a lunar flyby was conducted on September 9th, 2021.

The main purpose of the “Chang’e 5” mission was the sample return accomplished in 2020, and it was reported in 2021 that initial analysis of those samples showed them to be about 1.96 billion years old. These “young” lunar samples fill an important data gap that will advance lunar research.

2022 promises to be a much more exciting lunar year.  Among the more significant missions planned are:

• Artemis 1: Delivers 10 lunar cubesats as a secondary mission to testing the Orion capsule launched by the SLS.
• CAPSTONE: A lunar orbiter that will test positioning technology. This will be the first lunar cubesat, and is being launched by a Rocket Lab Electron rocket.
• Intuitive Machines IM-1: First NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission on the Nova-C lunar lander; lofted via a Falcon 9.
• Korea Pathfinder Luna Orbiter: The first South Korean lunar orbiter focuses on resource mapping and technology demonstration and will be launched on a Falcon 9.
• Chandrayaan-3: A Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk III) will power India’s second attempt to land on the Moon. The first failed in 2019.
• Hakuto-R Mission 1: ispace Japan is sending a lunar lander technology demonstrator to the Moon on a Falcon 9.
• Emirates Lunar Mission: A lunar rover that will be aboard the above mentioned Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander.
• SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon): The first Japanese surface mission is focused on demonstrating precision lunar landing technology, and will fly on an H-IIA rocket.
• Mission One: The first NASA CLPS mission using the Astrobotic Technology lander and lofted to the Moon on the Vulcan Centaur.

Incredibly, this is only a partial list of planned 2022 missions.  If only half of them succeed, 2022 has the potential to be the busiest year ever for robotic lunar exploration and development.

Unlike the Moon, Mars had a busy 2021. Three major missions launched in 2020 arrived at Mars during 2021, including:

• Emirates Mars Mission/Hope: The orbiter entered Mars orbit February 9th.
• Tianwen-1: This Chinese mission included an orbiter that arrived on February 10th, and a lander that touched down May 14th, disgorging the Zhurong rover, which is currently operational. This first of its kind Chinese mission entered China into an elite club whose members have successfully soft-landed something on Mars.
• Perseverance: The U.S. NASA rover landed on February 18th, and is currently collecting samples for return to Earth via a future mission.
• Ingenuity: A helicopter delivered with Perseverance; it flew on Mars for the first time April 19th.

The Perseverance mission held special importance from a space development perspective.  The Ingenuity helicopter—the first powered flight on a planet other than Earth—will surely lead to capabilities that will prove useful in the development and settlement of Mars. Additionally, Perseverance carries MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), an experiment that will extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, making it the first ever demonstration of the potential of ISRU (In-situ Resource Utilization).

Looking ahead to 2022, only two new probes to Mars are in queue:

• Psyche: A U.S. asteroid mission that will fly by Mars in 2023 enroute to a metal rich asteroid.
• ExoMars 2022: A Joint Russian/ESA lander/rover is planned for a launch to Mars. This mission was originally planned for launch in 2020, but was delayed to 2022 due to technical issues.

At one point, Elon Musk was talking about a Starship/Superheavy launch to Mars in the Q3 2022 launch window, but this is now out of reach as the major goal for Starship/Superheavy is to make orbit in 2022.  The Q4 2024 Mars window is still a possibility, so stay tuned.

Two important asteroid events occurred in 2021:

• DART: A NASA asteroid redirection test launched November 24th on a Falcon 9. It is planned to encounter the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022. The target asteroid is part of a binary asteroid system, with the main asteroid being Didymos A. Dimorphos is not an Earth-crossing asteroid and there no possibility that its orbit will be altered by the experiment such that Earth is endangered. DART itself will impact the asteroid in an attempt to alter its orbit.
• Lucy: A NASA mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids launched on a 12-year voyage October 16 by an Atlas V. We won’t see much from Lucy in 2022 since it will not encounter its first target, 52246 DonaldJohanson, until April 20, 2025. In addition to this asteroid, Lucy will visit an impressive seven more: 3548 Eurybates (12 August 2027), 15094 Polymele (15 September 2027), 11351 Leucus (18 April 2028), 21900 Orus (11 November 2028), and 617 Patroclus-Menoetius (2 March 2033). The Jupiter Trojans are a high-priority science target in the Decadal Survey. They are old, dark, and cold, and are expected to provide a window into the evolution of the solar system. From a space development perspective, all information about asteroid resources is valuable, and it is possible that the Jupiter Trojans are as numerous as the main belt asteroids, making them a rich source of potential resources.

Another exciting NASA asteroid mission, Psyche, is planned for an August 2022 launch on a Falcon Heavy, with an expected encounter with the metal-rich asteroid Psyche in 2026.

2021 was a great year for asteroid exploration and planetary defense, setting the foundation for an actual asteroid deflection test in 2022 and years of discoveries from the Lucy mission.

In summary, during 2021 robot probes made significant advances that will support space development and settlement, but 2022 looms as even more exciting, especially with regard to lunar and asteroid missions.

OSIRIS-REx has just entered orbit around asteroid Bennu on New Year’s Eve, 2018.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is an asteroid sample return mission, similar to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2. OSIRIS-REx’s name defines both its mission and its capabilities.

• ‘Origins’ – the return and analysis of a sample of a pristine carbon-rich asteroid to study the nature, history, and distribution of the asteroid’s minerals and organic material.
• ‘Spectral Interpretation’ – the global properties of a primitive carbon-rich asteroid to allow for direct comparison with existing ground-based telescopic data for all asteroids.
• ‘Resource Identification’ – the goal of mapping the global properties, chemistry, mineralogy of a primitive carbon-rich asteroid to define its geologic and dynamic history and provide context for the returned sample.
• ‘Security’ – measuring the Yarkovsky Effect on the asteroid and learn which asteroid properties contribute to the effect.
• ‘Regolith Explorer’ – documenting the texture, morphology, geochemistry, and spectral properties of the regolith (surface material) at the sampling site.

Asteroid Bennu was selected for this mission because of its composition, size, and proximity to Earth. Bennu is a rare B-type asteroid (primitive and carbon-rich) and is expected to have organic compounds and water-bearing minerals. B-type asteroids have not significantly changed since they formed 4.5 billion years ago. In comparison, Hayabusa2’s target, Ryugu, is a C-type carbonaceous asteroid which are the most common type in the solar system. Bennu is ~500 m in equatorial diameter, ~510 m in polar diameter, it has a 4.3 hours rotational period, a 1.2-year orbital period, a 6-degree orbital inclination, and comes close to Earth every 6 years.

OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft at Bennu (artist concept). Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

OSIRIS-REx was launched from Earth on 8 September 2016 on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It then entered a cruise phase after successfully deploying its solar panels, initiating its propulsion system, and establishing a communication link with Earth. On 3-4 December 2018, OSIRIS-REx matched the speed (~63,000 mph) and orbit of Bennu at roughly 19 km away from the asteroid. It entered Bennu’s orbit on December 31, 2018, and will start a remote sensing campaign used to select a sample site. After a sample site is selected, OSIRIS-REx will move into position to collect a sample of Bennu’s surface material. OSIRIS-REx can make up to three attempts using the TAGSAM to collect >60 grams of material. Around March 2021, the spacecraft will depart Bennu for the return trip back to Earth. OSIRIS-REx is then scheduled to land in the United States Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range in late September 2023.

OSIRIS-REx has several instruments onboard supporting its mission. Some of the instruments are:

• The High Gain Antenna provides communications between the spacecraft and Earth ground systems.
• The OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter provides ranging data, global topographic mapping, and local topographic mapping of candidate sample sites.
• The guidance, navigation, and control LIDAR provides information about the spacecraft’s range to Bennu’s surface, to ensure that the spacecraft maintains a safe distance from Bennu.
• The NavCams, or Navigation Cameras, are part of the guidance, navigation, and control system on OSIRIS-REx. They are used for optical navigation of the spacecraft.
• The Sample Return Capsule is designed to hold and return the sample of Bennu’s regolith to Earth.
• The Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) is an elegantly simple sampler head with an articulated arm. It is designed to collect a sample from the surface of Bennu.
• The Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS) produces mineral and organic spectral maps and gathers local spectral information of candidate sample sites in near-infrared.
• Thermal Emission Spectrometer (OTES) produces mineral and thermal emission spectral maps, and local spectral information of candidate sample sites.

Data obtained from OSIRIS-REx’s two spectrometers, OVIRS and OTES, have already found the presence of hydroxyl molecules, which contain oxygen and hydrogen atoms bonded together. An analysis of the data suggests these hydroxyl groups exist across the asteroid in water-bearing clay minerals. This implies that at some point in the asteroid’s life it interacted with water, which may have been sourced from Bennu’s parent body, a much larger asteroid. Such water-bearing clay may be an important resource for future asteroid miners and space settlers.

Mosaic image of asteroid Bennu taken by OSIRIS-REx from a range of 15 miles on December 2, 2018.
Image: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.

Ultimately, OSIRIS-REx’s mission is important in understanding our origins, future Earth asteroid protection missions, and will further our ability to exploit solar system resources.

For example, Bennu may contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth’s oceans. Additionally, Bennu is potentially one of the most hazardous asteroids, as it has a relatively high probability of impacting the Earth late in the 22nd century. Instruments onboard OSIRIS-REx will determine Bennu’s physical and chemical properties, which will be critical if we (the Earth) ever need to undertake an asteroid impact mitigation mission. Finally, asteroids like Bennu contain natural resources such as water, organics, and precious metals. In the future, these asteroids may fuel the exploration of the solar system by robotic and manned spacecraft.

By Trevor Mills

What is Hayabusa2?

Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa2 (“Peregrine Falcon” in Japanese) is a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) spacecraft which is scheduled to return a sample of asteroid Ryugu to Earth in 2020. Hayabusa2 is a successor to Hayabusa, which returned a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth on 13 June 2010. Even though Hayabusa experienced numerous technical glitches, its success inspired the Hayabusa2 mission and further exploration of near-Earth asteroids.

Hayabusa’s origins go back even further, predating the establishment of JAXA. In June 1986, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), now part of JAXA, developed a sample return plan for the asteroid Anteros to be launched during the 1990s. However, ISAS decided against launching the mission until some of the technologies were able to mature. By the mid-1990s, ISAS created a sample return mission called the Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft (MUSES-C) but delays pushed its launch to 9 May 2003, when it was renamed Hayabusa.

What is its mission?

Hayabusa2’s goal is to build on the success of Hayabusa and to establish the basis for future deep-space exploration. The structure of the probe itself is similar to the original Hayabusa but Hayabusa2 has incorporated novel technologies which have developed since its predecessor was designed. Hayabusa had a parabolic shaped antenna, where Hayabusa2 has flat antennae allowing for increased data transmission. Hayabusa2’s four ion engines produce 10 mili-Newton’s (mN) of thrust per engine compared to the 8mN per engine on Hayabusa. Other instruments such as the sampler mechanism, target markers, re-entry capsule, remote sensing instruments, and small landers/rovers have been improved since the original mission. Additionally, Hayabusa2 has a “collision device” allowing it to create an artificial crater to collect “fresh samples” which are less weathered by the space environment.

What is its schedule?

Hayabusa2 was launched on 3 December 2014 from the Tanegashima Space Center and arrived approximately 20 kilometers (km) away from target asteroid Ryugu on 27 June 2018 at 9:35 a.m. (Japan Standard Time, JST). During the week of 16 July 2018, operations began to lower Hayabusa2’s hovering altitude to less than 6 km from Ryugu’s surface. Hayabusa2 is scheduled to attempt as many as three brief landings with a goal of collecting at least one gram of material from the surface of Ryugu. The first landing attempt will occur in October 2018, with a second one to possibly follow in February 2019.

Where is it going?

Ryugu was discovered on 10 May 1999 by Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research astronomers at Lincoln Lab’s Experimental Test Site near Socorro, New Mexico. Ryugu is a C-type, carbonaceous asteroid. C-type asteroids are the most common type in the solar system and are composed of carbon compounds, hydrated minerals, and various metals. Ryugu is composed of contain nickel, iron, cobalt, water, nitrogen, hydrogen, and ammonia. All the compounds in the asteroid are listed to be worth $82.76 billion by Asterank, a scientific and economic database of over 600,000 asteroids.

Why is this important?

Not only is Hayabusa2 a testament of our desire to explore the unexplored, it is also a testament of our growing ability to explore the cosmos. Additionally, the mission is significant in understanding more about ourselves. JAXA notes they expect to clarify the origin of life by analyzing samples acquired from Ryugu to study organic matter and water in the solar system and how they coexist while affecting one another. Finally, missions like the Hayabusa family and NASA’s Osiris-Rex (scheduled to sample the asteroid Bennu in July 2020), and companies like Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, and others are part of an ecosystem on the cutting edge of technologies, policies, and practices that will allow humanity to take advantage of (a fraction of) the estimated $15 quintillion worth of asteroid-based resources available in our solar system.

“OSIRIS-REx has NSS members really excited,” said Bruce Pittman, NSS Senior Vice President. “The craft will provide a complete map of the chemistry and mineralogy of a carbon based asteroid. Such asteroids will be critical for both the economic development and settlement of space. The TAGSAM sample collection device may provide a foundation for the development of future asteroid mining robots. Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, and his team at the University of Arizona have put together a really impressive mission.”

The probe is the third in NASA’s “New Frontiers” program of medium-sized exploration missions, and cost about $800 million in addition to launch and operations costs. The Lockheed Martin built spacecraft will journey to Bennu, a Near-Earth asteroid, arriving in August 2018. After two years of study, an innovative sample collection device, TAGSAM, will use jets of nitrogen gas to assist in collecting a minimum of 60 grams of samples.

OSIRIS-REx will leave Bennu in March 2021, and arrive back at Earth two and a half years later. The sample return canister is targeted toward a parachute landing at the Utah Test and Training Range on September 24, 2023. Although the primary mission objective is to return to Earth a pristine sample of a carbon rich asteroid for analysis, other objectives focus on resource identification, planetary security, and regolith exploration. Other “New Frontiers” missions include Juno, which is currently orbiting Jupiter, and New Horizons, which flew past Pluto in July 2015 and is now heading toward another object in the Kuiper Belt, with an expected arrival in January 2019.

Additionally, OSIRIS-REx will measure the effect of sunlight on the orbit of the asteroid, allowing the risk of an asteroid hitting the Earth to be better understood. “NSS advocates increased U.S. spending on protecting Earth from passing asteroids and comets,” said Dale Skran, NSS Executive Vice President. “OSIRIS-REx is a major step toward achieving the goals set forward in the NSS position paper on Planetary Defense.

Development of asteroid resources is fundamental to NSS’ vision of our future in space (see our Roadmap to Space Settlement Milestone 18 “Exploration, Utilization, and Settlement of Asteroids”) and yesterday’s events have brought that future materially closer.

“Deep Space Industries has worked diligently to get to this point, and now we can say with confidence that we have the right technology, the right team and the right plan to execute this historic mission,” said Rick Tumlinson, chairman of the board and co-founder of Deep Space Industries. “Building on our Prospector-X mission, Prospector-1 will be the next step on our way to harvesting asteroid resources.”

Recently, Deep Space Industries and its partner, the government of Luxembourg, announced plans to build and fly Prospector-X, an experimental mission to low-Earth orbit that will test key technologies needed for low-cost exploration spacecraft. This precursor mission is scheduled to launch in 2017. Then, before the end of this decade, Prospector-1 will travel beyond Earth’s orbit to begin the first space mining exploration mission.

“Our Prospector missions will usher in a new era of low cost space exploration” said Grant Bonin, chief engineer at DSI. “We are developing Prospector both for our own asteroid mining ambitions, but also to bring an extremely low-cost, yet high-performance exploration spacecraft to the market. At a tiny fraction of what traditional custom-built space probes cost, the Prospector platform has the versatility and ruggedness of design to become the new standard for low cost space exploration.”

Prospector-1 is a small spacecraft (50 kg when fueled) that strikes the ideal balance between cost and performance. In addition to the radiation-tolerant payloads and avionics, all DSI spacecraft use the Comet water propulsion system, which expels superheated water vapor to generate thrust. Water will be the first asteroid mining product, so the ability to use water as propellant will provide future DSI spacecraft with the ability to refuel in space.

“During the next decade, we will begin the harvest of space resources from asteroids,” said Daniel Faber, CEO at Deep Space Industries. “We are changing the paradigm of business operations in space, from one where our customers carry everything with them, to one in which the supplies they need are waiting for them when they get there.”

The destination asteroid will be chosen from a group of top candidates selected by the world renowned team of asteroid experts at Deep Space Industries. When it arrives at the target, the Prospector-1 spacecraft will map the surface and subsurface of the asteroid, taking visual and infrared imagery and mapping overall water content, down to approximately meter-level depth. When this initial science campaign is complete, Prospector-1 will use its water thrusters to attempt touchdown on the asteroid, measuring the target’s geophysical and geotechnical characteristics.

“The ability to locate, travel to, and analyze potentially rich supplies of space resources is critical to our plans,” continued Faber. “This means not just looking at the target, but actually making contact.”

Along with customer missions already in progress, such as the cluster of small satellites being built by DSI for HawkEye 360, the Prospector missions will demonstrate the company’s simple, low-cost, but high-performance approach to space exploration. The Prospector platform is now available to government and commercial explorers interested in developing sophisticated, yet low-cost missions of their own.

“Prospector-1 is not only the first commercial interplanetary mission, it is also an important milestone in our quest to open the frontier,” said Tumlinson. “By learning to ‘live off the land’ in space, Deep Space Industries is ushering in a new era of unlimited economic expansion.”

More detailed information about the Prospector program, including the Prospector-X (eXperimental) and Prospector-1 missions, and the DSI technologies that are making these missions possible, can be found on the company’s website:
DeepSpaceIndustries.com