Hayabusa Project
By: Kirby Valentin
Abstract
The Hayabusa mission was the world’s first space mission to collect asteroid samples and return them to the Earth.
The Hayabusa spacecraft was launched on May 9, 2003 towards Itokawa and returned to Earth on June 13, 2010.
Objective
The goal of my project was to create a space weathering map of the Itokawa asteroid.
Itokawa
• S type asteroid
• dimensions: 535 x 294 x 209 m
• 630 meters long and 250 meters wide
• First asteroid to be the target of a sample return mission
• Near earth potentially hazardous asteroid
Space Weathering
• Space weathering is overtime exposure of airless bodies to
different aspects of the space environment that results in
their surfaces changing.
• Space weathering causes areas to become darker because
the smoother areas absorb more light.
• Smoother areas absorb more light because they have
more minerals like pyroxene and olivine.
Results
This is the space weathering map which was my goal to
create. The x-axis is the longitude of Itokawa and the yaxis is the amount of light absorption. So the points
further up have less space weathering because they
absorb more light and the points further down have more
space weathering because they absorb less light
Hayabusa
• Solar powered, three-axis stabilized spacecraft that was
pointed towards the Sun
• Used an ion engine
• Contains four scientific remote sensing instruments
Data Analysis Process
• Retrieved data from Nasa Planetary Data System
• Converted fits data to text data
• Calculated Space Weathering Index with C program
• Used perl script to generate spectral plot file which is used by gnuplot
• Used Java Small Body Mapping Tool to better understand Itokawa
Future Work
• Using the bidirectional reflectance distribution function to study the light
scattering on Itokawa
• Finding potential sources of clean energy on Itokawa or other asteroids
Acknowledgements
• Suny Oswego
• National Central University
• National Science Foundation's Office of International Science and
Engineering award number 1065093
• Lotus Hsu
• Professor Abe
• Professor Kanbur
• Professor Wing Huen-Ip
• Professor Hseieh-Lung Hsu