From idea to flight - A review of the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) development and a comparison to historical fast-paced space programs
Section snippets
Introduction and background
The search for the origins of life and an increased awareness of the risks posed by possible asteroid impacts are two corner stones in the international space exploration endeavour [1]. Asteroids, which are the leftovers of planet formation, are thought to have formed during the accretion process of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Since this time, they have changed only little preserving the original content of material from which the planets, including the Earth, have been formed.
On
Mission and system overview
Hayabusa2 (HY-2) and MASCOT arrived at their target asteroid (162173) Ryugu on June 27, 2018. After arrival, HY-2 first performed a global mapping in order to characterize the asteroid and to find a suitable landing site for MASCOT based on local geology and thermal constraints. On October 3rd, 2018, HY-2 descended to the separation altitude of 51 m, at which point MASCOT was ejected via a spring mechanism with a controlled low velocity in the order of a few cm/s. MASCOT fell to the asteroid
The development program
The typical life cycle model for space projects as defined by ESA and NASA is divided in 6–7 phases (0/A: Mission analysis/feasibility to F:Disposal). These phases stem from the original partition of lifecycle stages as defined in the ISO/IEC 15288: Concept Stage, Development Stage, Production Stage, Utilization and Support Stage, Retirement Phase [17]. While the early phases are dedicated to detailing and improving the design, phases C and D are dedicated to the implementation and realization
Verification and test activities
The two most challenging tasks on MASCOT Module Level were the qualification for its primary structure and its thermal design. In order to meet the strict mass and volume requirement an ultra-lightweight CFRP-foam sandwich frame was designed for MASCOTs LM and a solid CFRP truss frame for its MESS. The thermal architecture was designed to be robust, thus capable to withstand a wide range of temperatures during the different mission phases like Cruise Phase, Separation, Descent and Landing and
A brief history of crash programs in space
Highly accelerated technology development programs are not new. Mostly, they have been associated with wartime efforts, exceptional scarcity of resources, or situations of intense competition in industry [[23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]], or the advent of disruptive inventions. Well known examples include the invention of the cavity magnetron [[29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36]], as well as navigation, communication, and weather satellites [37] or stealth aircraft [[38], [39],
Project Ranger - the pursuit of zero risk tolerance
Project Ranger in many ways is the contemporary civilian counterpart to CORONA. Both began in the aftershocks of Sputnik and found their final form by the mid-1960s, both were highly complex in their time, and both lasted for only a few days per flight. Also, due to the covert nature of CORONA in particular regarding the full technical capabilities of the spacecraft, both had to invent all technologies from scratch (or at least from what aeronautics could contribute as point of departure), and
Faster, Better, Cheaper
The missions flown under NASAs Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC) drive initiated during the tenure of NASA Administrator D.S. Goldin 1992–2001 were not fully requirements-driven designs and accepted a very modest measure of risk. Both these properties were a paradigm-shifting change from policies in effect since the mid-1960s which strove for minimum risk flagship missions carrying cutting-edge science, a trend initiated by the scathing reviews and investigations of the Ranger program. Although
Conclusion
Delayed only 3 days by weather, the small asteroid lander MASCOT was launched aboard the Japanese Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission on December 3rd, 2014, 04:22 UT, within the first interplanetary launch window. MASCOT was a fast paced high performance prototype project, developed under demanding constraints of volume, mass, available personnel, budget, and accessible infrastructures, to a timely defined deadline of a celestially fixed launch date. With a model philosophy tailored ‘live’
Acknowledgments
MASCOT was developed and built under the leadership of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with contributions from the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The authors would like to acknowledge the significant contributions from all members of the MASCOT Project Team as well as the Hayabusa2 Project Team.
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Paths not taken – The GOSSAMER roadmap's other options
2021, Advances in Space ResearchCitation Excerpt :In the staged PFM model construction philosophy that the Gossamer Roadmap envisaged for Gossamer-1 to -3 and with the originally envisaged biannual launch interval timeline this approach maximizes the time available for a concurrent process of comprehensive review and evaluation of recent progress in solar sailing studies, system-level configuration trade studies, and detailed design. However, following the MASCOT experience (Grimm et al., 2019a; Grimm and Hendrikse, 2019), a wholly Concurrent AIV/AIT approach has become very likely for spacecraft projects of a comparable effort. Concurrent AIV accepts integration and testing schedules without pre-set discrete phase boundaries which are based on milestones of common achievement of a uniform maturity status of all units within the spacecraft design.
Sailing at the brink – The no-limits of near-/now-term-technology solar sails and SEP spacecraft in (multiple) NEO rendezvous
2021, Advances in Space ResearchCitation Excerpt :It may be said that both trajectories we found pose an unrealistic launch date requirement to begin with, within 14 to 19 months of the discovery of “2019 PDC”, that can barely be met even by an all-out crash programme. However, there are examples of extremely fast-paced and complex space programmes which made it to the launch pad that fast at a point in time in history (Day et al., 1998, McDonald, 1997, Peebles, 1997) and there are also examples that at least came close under less pressing circumstances more recently regarding the responsive production of flight hardware after extensive preceding studies, e.g. (Grimm et al., 2019). At the other end, either one of these flights of fancy we created would have, in the fictitious scenario of the PDC 2019 exercise, extended the time in which the location of the coming asteroid impact was precisely known from barely 2 weeks to well over two years, and would have given that much more time to the complete evacuation of New York City and the surrounding metropolitan areas from New Jersey to Long Island and Connecticut.
Size matters - The shell lander concept for exploring medium-size airless bodies
2020, Acta AstronauticaCitation Excerpt :Apart from remote sensing surveys and fly-bys, especially landing and sample collection missions have dramatically increased our understanding of their physical composition as well as their mechanical properties. Small carry-on landers, like the European Rosetta lander Philae [1] which successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov/Gerasimenko on November 12th, 2014, or the German/French lander MASCOT [2,3] on-board the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission (Fig. 1) which successfully landed on asteroid 162173 Ryugu on October 3rd, 2018, have proven to be valuable assets by avoiding additional complexity of the main satellite and keeping project development times and costs in manageable bounds. Landing on small bodies is particular difficult due to the weak gravitational field and means to secure the lander to the surface have to be taken into account.
Research Status and Development Prospect of Planetary Exploration Robots
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