OKEANOS – A Mission That Would Have Retrurned Samples From the Trojan Asteroids

Getting a mission to the purpose of formally being accepted for launch is an ordeal. Nevertheless, even after they aren’t chosen for implementation, their concepts, and in some instances, their applied sciences, can stay on in different missions. That was the case for the Oversize Kite-craft for Exploration and AstroNautics within the Outer Photo voltaic system (OKEANOS) mission, initially deliberate as a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA) mission. Regardless of not receiving funding to finish its total mission, the mission staff launched a paper that particulars the unique plan for the mission, and a few of these plans had been included into different missions which can be nonetheless underneath improvement.

OKEANOS sought to construct on JAXA’s success in returning samples from asteroids to Earth. Its most well-known mission in that regard was Hayabusa-2, which returned samples from the asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and has been the topic of dozens of scientific papers since. Ryugu is a near-earth asteroid, which implies its origins within the photo voltaic system are dramatically totally different from these of different asteroids farther out from the Solar, which is the place OKEANOS got here in.

The unique plan for OKEANOS was to launch a pattern return mission to one of many Jupiter Trojan asteroids that sit within the Lagrange factors in entrance of and behind Juptier and its orbital path. Scientists imagine these asteroids originated exterior of Neptune’s orbit within the Kuiper belt however had been introduced nearer to the Solar attributable to gravitational fluctuations attributable to the migration of the fuel large planets. Since they might maintain clues to the early photo voltaic system, astronomers are all in favour of their composition, and a few area exploration fanatics have an interest within the supplies they maintain for in-situ useful resource utilization functions. However to this point, no missions have visited them but.

That’s about to vary, although, with Lucy, a NASA mission that launched in 2021 to go to them. Nevertheless, Lucy will merely do distant observations and lacks the gear to pattern them immediately, not to mention return a pattern again to Earth. The mission staff had hoped OKEANOS would just do that.

A number of novel applied sciences could be used to allow OKEANOS’ scientific goals. Some of the fascinating was a mixture photo voltaic sail and ion drive generally known as a solar energy sail. A solar energy sail combines the photo voltaic pushing energy of a photo voltaic sail with versatile photovoltaic photo voltaic collectors that may gather a major quantity of power whereas deployed in a sail-like configuration. JAXA has additionally efficiently examined an identical system with its IKAROS mission, demonstrating the know-how in 2010.

Since photo voltaic sails have tiny thrust out close to Jupiter, OKEANOS depends fully on an ion engine and easily deploys its “sails” to deploy the photo voltaic panels that gather power to energy the ion drive. However as soon as it reached its vacation spot, it might make the most of its second fascinating know-how—a lander.

The 2 predominant asteroid pattern return missions – OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa-2 – immediately touched down on the floor of their respective asteroids. Nevertheless, there have been deployed landers which have a minimum of tried to land on an asteroid earlier than – Philae, the lander that accompanied ESA’s Rosetta mission, might be essentially the most well-known. However by no means earlier than has a mission tried to land a lander, gather a pattern, and return it to a “mothership” that might then transport that pattern again to Earth. Doing so out on the Trojan asteroids would add a brand new problem stage of getting vital communications lag time, making it troublesome to troubleshoot any issues with the mission.

Given JAXA’s monitor report, it appeared doubtless that they might pull off that technical problem. Nevertheless, the mission was by no means totally funded attributable to a “value difficulty,” based on the paper. JAXA chosen a mission generally known as LiteBIRD to review the cosmic microwave background as its large-class mission for this decade as a substitute. Regardless of that, the technical particulars of a number of the instrumentation have been described in different papers, and the mission staff feels assured that future asteroid pattern return missions will undertake a minimum of a few of them. We’ll remember to see extra of these sooner or later as curiosity grows in understanding the roots of our photo voltaic system and the way we’d make the most of the available sources on asteroids.

Study Extra:
Takao et al. – Pattern return system of OKEANOS—the solar energy sail for Jupiter Trojan exploration
UT – Lucy Provides One other Asteroid to its Flyby Listing
UT – Separation Digicam Takes Full Photographs and ‘Film’ of IKAROS Photo voltaic Sail
UT – Tiny Fragments of a 4-Billion 12 months Outdated Asteroid Reveal Its Historical past

Lead Picture:
Idea photographs of the OKEANOS mission.
Credit score – Takao et al.