Jun'ichiro Kawaguchi

Hayabusa is a spacecraft to explore the asteroid (25143) Itokawa. The spacecraft was launched on May 9, 2003 from Uchinoura Space Center using M-V launch vehicle, and arrived at (25143) Itokawa on September 12, 2005. Hayabusa adopts an Ion Engine System (IES) for its main propulsion. From the viewpoint of navigation, an error in acceleration modeling of low thrust has a great influence on accuracy of orbit determination and prediction.

2006年３月中旬，米国ヒューストンで開催された月惑星科学者会議（Luner and Planetary Science Conference；LPSC）で日本の小惑星探査機「はやぶさ」に関する特別セッションが行われた。LPSCは月や惑星探査に関する国際会議の中でも特にレベルが高く，著名な科学者が集まることで有名な会合。

The MUSES-C mission is the world's first sample and return attempt to/from the near Earth asteroid. In deep space, it is hard to navigate, guide, and control a spacecraft on a real-time basis remotely from the earth mainly due to the communication delay. So autonomy is required for final approach and landing on an unknown body. It is important to navigate and guide a spacecraft to the landing point without hitting rocks or big stones. In the final descent phase, cancellation of the horizontal speed relative to the surface of the landing site is essential. This paper describes various kinds of robotics technologies applied for MUSES-C mission. A global mapping method, an autonomous descent scheme, and a novel sample-collection method, and asteroid exploration robot are proposed and presented in detail. This paper also presents the flight data and results.

The observation of Asteroid Itokawa by Hayabusa spacecraft has brought us a lot of new knowledge for very small (about 500m in length) S-type asteroid. We already have started to consider next space mission to small bodies in the solar system. For the next asteroid mission, we would like to explore C-type asteroid, which is also major type in the asteroid belt. This type of asteroid is supposed to have organic matter or water more than S-type asteroid, and it is important to study the material related to life. In this paper, we present the current plan for the next exploration to asteroids. We also want to encourage many researchers to join our asteroid mission.

2003年5月に打ち上げられた工学実験探査機「はやぶさ」は2005年夏に小惑星ITOKAWAに到着後、表面のサンプルを採取して2007年に地球に持ち帰る計画である。サンプル採取の前に、高度約10kmの地点から2ヶ月程度、可視光カメラ、近赤外線センサ、X線センサを用いて小惑星の観測を行い、科学観測とともに、着陸地点の選定に役立てることとしている。本稿では、「はやぶさ」の観測センサと観測計画の概要を述べる。

On the ascent path of the vehicles like spaceplanes, the optimal steering shows the different behavior from that of conventional rockets. This is because both thrust and lift force varies depending on the change of the atmospheric dynamic pressure. This indicates that it is required the new guidance strategy for these kind of vehicles. In this paper, we propose a new guidance strategy which has only four parameters to be determined. This method is derived from some analytical assumptions and approximates the steering in simple linear and logarithmic function. Only by carrying out the numerical integration of this, the parameters are easily determined to satisfy the terminal boundary conditions.