PROCYON, Small satellite asteroid flyby launched with Hayabusa 2 Options

[Explorer1]

PROCYON is in the right trajectory too; the initial operations phase has begun.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Flight_S...ROCYON_999.html

[Weywot]

Will this probe be reaching one a lot sooner than Hayabusa 2?

As Hayabusa2's arrival at 1999 JU3 is planned for June 2018, PROCYON will make its fly by earlier. In the above mentioned paper by Ozaki et al., all possible target asteroids will be reached mid to end of 2016.
The paper was written prior to the launch and as the launch day was not clear, the target asteroid was not selected. Table nr. 4 on page 9 of the paper lists some of the target astroids, of which all require an earth gravity assist. The ones that can be reached directly in a shorter time result in a too short phase of only about one day where the probe can steer by optical navigation. This time sould be more than 3 days, which is only possible for the asteroids reached by the gavity assist scenario.

So we will know the exact fly by date, when the asteroid will be selected and announced by JAXA.

[katodomo]

If I get that right in this Japanese article 2000 DP 107 has been offically announced as the primary candidate target asteroid:

http://senews.jp/satellite/2015/04/07/528