A family concept for small body lander structures based on MASCOT

Abstract

The DLR Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) is an approx. 10 kg shoebox-sized lander platform developed for the Japanese HAYABUSA2 Asteroid Mission. MASCOT landed at 3. October 2018 on to the asteroid Ryugu (formerly 1999 JU3) where it conducted in-situ experiments partially autonomously and for more than two asteroid days (17 hrs) at two different locations. After MASCOT, several direct follow-on studies were performed, for example MASCOT2 for the AIDA/AIM mission proposal, the ALDERAAN proposal and currently MASCOT3 for a potential Apophis lander in the frame of the RAMSES mission. The goal of this paper is to outline the structural development and peculiarities of various small body landing systems based on MASCOT. Apart from the lander itself, also different interface structures designs are presented. In detail, the paper discusses the structural design variations and how the design was adjusted over time in order to respect the corresponding sets of given mission as well as system requirements. The paper concludes with the presentation of family concept for small body lander structures for landing systems of approx. 10-30 kg. Such a family concept is adaptable to a range of mission scenarios and can be mounted piggy-back to various mother spacecrafts.