MASCOT landing on Ryugu, 3 October 2018 |
MASCOT landing on Ryugu, 3 October 2018 |
Oct 2 2018, 04:07 AM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1422 Joined: 26-July 08 Member No.: 4270 |
The Japanese Hayabusa 2 twitter account reports that the spacecraft has begun descending toward Ryugu in preparation to deploy the MASCOT lander. Nothing on the English twitter as of the time of this post.
https://twitter.com/haya2_jaxa/status/1046965970466746369 -------------------- -- Hungry4info (Sirius_Alpha)
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Oct 3 2018, 03:10 PM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 22 Joined: 15-November 14 Member No.: 7320 |
Indeed. There will be another press conference in 25 min, maybe they tell us more about the expected life time of the battery. I think it is targeted to last at least two sols in the worst case. Also in the grphic from JAXA, end of mission (EOM) is during the third night. Let's hope for the best, and that the DLR team as uploaded a energy saving program for the third night, so MASCOT may have the chance to upload the data in the next morning, if it survives.
Otherwise the last hours in the night without contact are wasted. The technical reason is the mass constraint. With just 10 kg, solar panels and rechargables are just too heavy. Rechargables and do not have the energy density compared to non-rechargable batteries. Also, the location MASCOT finally settles was unknown, so no sun light guaranteed. And as we have seen with Philae, if the additional power from solar is required for the science goal, this just adds to the risk. |
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