Masahiko HAYAKAWA

Abstract The Hayabusa2 extended mission, nicknamed Hayabusa2# ( # is pronounced SHARP, which stands for the Small Hazardous Asteroid Reconnaissance Probe), is JAXA’s small body explorer to conduct science and engineering investigations in space. After the successful return to the Earth with the samples from the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu on 2020 December 6, Hayabusa2 diverted away from Earth to start its decade-long extended mission. The major scope includes an engineering demonstration of long-term maintenance strategies for spacecraft and operation systems and scientific investigations during various mission phases. Major scientific investigations include spacecraft-based telescopic observations of exoplanets and zodiacal dust observations during the cruise phase, flyby observations of the near-Earth asteroid (98943) Torifune in 2026 July, and rendezvous observations of near-Earth asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031. This study overviews Hayabusa2#’s flyby and the physical properties of Torifune. Although the flyby operation planning is still ongoing, the mission will attempt to fly by the target at a distance (from the asteroid’s center) of 1–10 km. The flyby speed is planned to be 5.25 km s ⁻¹ , while the encounter location is 0.81 au from the Sun. The mission plans to fix the spacecraft’s orientation during the flyby, only allowing for a very limited pointing change to attain higher-resolution imaging. The mission will attempt to obtain science and engineering returns during the flyby. The planned investigations will offer stronger insights into material transport mechanisms in the inner solar system and a demonstration of planetary defense technologies.

Abstract Observations of exoplanet transits by small satellites have gained increasing attention for reducing biases in the detection of long-period planets. However, no unambiguous detection of an exoplanet has yet been demonstrated using optics with apertures smaller than 60 mm. Here, we investigated the detectability of exoplanet transits using the telescopic Optical Navigation Camera (ONC-T) on board the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which has an effective aperture of only 15 mm. We conducted transit observations of the hot Jupiters WASP-189 b and MASCARA-1 b, collecting data for 10 and four events, respectively. The transit signal was detected with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 13 for WASP-189 b and 8 for MASCARA-1 b for each event. Stacking all events improved the SNR to 40 and 16, respectively. The transit midtimes of each event were measured with a precision of 6 minutes and were consistent with Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data to within 2 minutes. The planet-to-star radius ratio was determined with an absolute precision of 0.004 (6% relative) and agreed with TESS results to within 0.002 (3% relative). The recent ONC-T and TESS data enabled an update to the planetary ephemerides. We report a 4 σ discrepancy between the updated orbital period of MASCARA-1 b and previously reported values. ONC-T sets a new record for the smallest-aperture instrument to detect an exoplanet transit from space, advancing the frontier of exoplanet science with miniature instrumentation. Our results suggest that optics as small as ONC-T may be capable of detecting transiting long-period Jupiters: a population that remains underrepresented in current surveys.

Abstract Diffuse Galactic light (DGL) is starlight scattered by interstellar dust. In visible wavelengths, earlier studies observed DGL toward regions of low optical depth in high Galactic latitude, and show marginal consistency with a theoretical model assuming single scattering by dust grains. However, a model for DGL in regions of high optical depth has not been established. In this study, we analyze wide-field imaging data toward a region of high optical depth near the Galactic center, which was obtained with the Optical Navigation Camera on board the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. The data are reduced by dark-current and stray-light subtraction, flat-field correction, and sensitivity calibration for the DGL measurement. In the image, we select dark low-intensity areas where background starlight is highly absorbed by interstellar dust, and extract the DGL component by masking pixels contaminated by stars. As a result, we find that the DGL intensity decreases toward high optical depth, and this trend is reversed from the previous measurements in optically thin regions. To explain the observed trend, we introduce DGL models inferred from a radiative transfer equation in a plane-parallel dusty slab. By assuming literature values for the albedo and scattering asymmetry factor of interstellar dust, the measured DGL intensity can be fitted by a model in which a dust slab without internal emitters is illuminated by backside stars.