The Hayabusa2 spacecraft investigated the small asteroid Ryugu, which has a rubble-pile structure. We describe an impact experiment on Ryugu using Hayabusa2’s Small Carry-on Impactor. The impact produced an artificial crater with a diameter >10 meters, which has a semicircular shape, an elevated rim, and a central pit. Images of the impact and resulting ejecta were recorded by the Deployable CAMera 3 for >8 minutes, showing the growth of an ejecta curtain (the outer edge of the ejecta) and deposition of ejecta onto the surface. The ejecta curtain was asymmetric and heterogeneous and it never fully detached from the surface. The crater formed in the gravity-dominated regime; in other words, crater growth was limited by gravity not surface strength. We discuss implications for Ryugu’s surface age.
A micro-piggyback satellite, ''"-LabSat'', was launched by an H-IIA rocket on 14 December 2002. "-LabSat is a bias momentum micro-satellite with two wheels, a configuration that is not normally capable of three-axis attitude maneuvers. This paper describes an algorithm that has been developed to enable such maneuvers and presents the results of its evaluation by numerical simulation and in-orbit experiment.
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