October 3, 2018

Hayabusa2/MASCOT mission: MASCOT lander successfully released

Tuesday 2 October, the Hayabusa2 probe descended from its reference orbit 20 kilometres above asteroid Ryugu to position itself just 55 metres from the surface.

On the night of 3 October just before 04:00 CET, Hayabusa2 released MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid surface SCOuT) in readiness for its landing on the asteroid at the MA-9 site selected by the MASCOT mission team at CNES’s Toulouse Space Centre (CST) in August.

Learn more at https://mascot.cnes.fr/fr/atterrissage

About the Hayabusa2 mission

Hayabusa2 is a sample return mission to asteroid Ryugu led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The French-German MASCOT lander on Hayabusa2 was developed and built by the German space agency DLR, in close collaboration with CNES. The lander’s scientific instruments were developed by DLR, the IAS space astrophysics institute and Braunschweig University of Technology (TUB). MASCOT and its experiments are being operated and controlled by DLR with support from CNES and in constant communication with JAXA.

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CONTACTS
Pascale Bresson    Attachée de presse     Tél. 01 44 76 75 39     pascale.bresson@cnes.fr
Raphaël Sart    Attaché de presse     Tél. 01 44 76 74 51     raphael.sart@cnes.fr
Sébastien Martignac    Attaché de presse     Tél. 01 44 76 78 35     sebastien.martignac@cnes.fr

cp145-2018_-_succes_largage_mascot_va.pdf (pdf - 121.2 KB)
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