Monday, October 3, 2022

MASCOT Rover deployed from Hayabusa 2 onto Ryugu 2018



The massively successful Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Hayabusa 2 deployed one of its four rovers, Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) onto the surface of asteroid Ryugu, October 3, 2018.  The German Aerospace Center (DLR) developed MASCOT in cooperation with National Centre for Space Studies in France.  It weights only about 21 lbs and is about 11.6"x10.8"x7.7".  It ran for about 16 hours on a non-rechargeable battery and completed its mission successfully.  

Three papers have been published discussing the results from MASCOT in Nature Astronomy, Science, and Journal of Geophysical Research.

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