MUSES-C, Its launch and early orbit operations

Abstract

The MUSES-C was launched on May 9th of this year and was named 'Hayabusa'. It was aimed to be the world's first sample and return from a near Earth asteroid, 1998SF36 now renamed "Itokawa". The spacecraft is a kind of technology demonstrator with four key technologies. The paper presents a quick report on the initial operation of the ion engines aboard and will show how the attitude control has been performed incorporating the closed loop de-saturation function on board. The paper also presents how much delta-V has been applied to the spacecraft as well as how the orbit determination under the low-thrust acceleration has been performed. Show more