Images of Ryugu captured during BOX-C operations

On July 20 - 21, 2018, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft descended to an altitude of about 6km as part of the BOX-C operation. We introduced a few of the images taken at this time in articles on July 25 and July 31. The article discussing the selection of the candidate landing sites also indicates the locations using BOX-C images.

In this post, we show 12 images taken with the ONC-T (Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic) during the BOX-C operation at approximately 30 degree intervals. We show the original images and the images marked with the landing site candidates below, starting with the complete set of candidates in Figure 1.

図1 リュウグウの地図に記された候補地点

Figure 1: Candidate landing sites marked on the photograph of the surface of Ryugu. The area labelled L08 is the candidate touchdown site, with L07 and M04 as back-up locations. MA-9 is the anticipated landing area of MASCOT, while N6 is the scheduled landing area for MINERVA-II-1. (credit: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University. University of Aizu, AIST.)

The images of the asteroid during the BOX-C operation are shown below, but please pay attention to the image orientation. In both the following and in Figure 1, the north pole of asteroid Ryugu is at the image top. In previous articles on July 25 and July 31, the orientation of this image was reversed. The north pole of Ryugu points in the same direction as the south pole on Earth, as Ryugu rotates in the opposite direction to our planet.

Image credit ※(注記): JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University. University of Aizu, AIST

Links

• Hayabusa2 Project

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