It’s been a while since I looked at the successful deployment and mission of the German MASCOT lander, which was deployed on the asteroid Ryugu on October 2nd. Powered by batteries, it was designed to do a few hops on the surface, take photos, do some scans, and last only about 12 hours which, at the time of my previous article on the little probe, had come and gone.
Since then there have been a set of updates via Twitter on the status of this boxy little pioneer – apparently it did 3 hops on the surface and successfully scanned 3 separate areas of the asteroid, also lasting longer than planned and, most importantly, before its batteries died it was able to send all the data it collected back to Earth.
Damned impressive. Now for the data it collected to be studied and understood so we know more about some of the most primitive parts of our solar system.
Hello #Earth, hello @haya2kun! I promised to send you some pictures of #Ryugu so here’s a shot I took during my descent. Can you spot my shadow? #AsteroidLanding pic.twitter.com/dmcilFl5ms
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 3, 2018
I’ve taken measurements with all my experiments, and my battery is holding up! Still going strong! #AsteroidLanding
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 3, 2018
All done with work! Oh my… can that be right? I explored Ryugu for more than 17 hours. That is more than my team expected. Do I get paid overtime for this? #asteroidlanding
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 4, 2018
And during this extra time, I also made another hop and explored part of a third asteroid day! But the best thing is: I sent ALL the data I collected to @haya2kun! Now team, it's up to YOU to understand Ryugu. #AsteroidLanding
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 4, 2018
Check this out! I took this picture when I was almost on #Ryugu's surface. Look at how sunlight is reflected off me. What a dark surface!
Credit: MASCOT/@DLR_en /@JAXA_en #AsteroidLanding pic.twitter.com/fqM8Jr0WCm— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 5, 2018
In case you were wondering… this is what was happening on Earth while I was #asteroidlanding and exploring! https://t.co/hKTx3FMoAO
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 5, 2018
So glad to finally be home, at asteroid #Ryugu! Here’s another picture that I took while I was landing – between 10 and 20 metres from the surface! What a place! It’s out of this world, don’t you think? #AsteroidLanding #hayabusa2 pic.twitter.com/PAxaQ3AwHX
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 7, 2018
And I hit the bull's eye! My descent to Ryugu was rather straight, don't you think? I made it to my planned landing site 'Alice's Wonderland'. Not too bad for a rookie! 😁😁😁 #asteroidlanding https://t.co/agN14VIYXc pic.twitter.com/gnJQ5NNBZd
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 12, 2018
Boulders, boulders and more boulders! Ryugu's surface is strewn with them… and some are huge! Can you see the one on the right? It is tens of metres long #AsteroidLanding pic.twitter.com/XUXXPfmYPX
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 12, 2018
What!? No regolith on Ryugu's surface? That's definitely not what I was expecting… it's a wonderland full of surprises… #AsteroidLanding pic.twitter.com/TINiHIMQrf
— MASCOT Lander (@MASCOT2018) October 12, 2018