Mission Design of DESTINY+: Toward Active Asteroid (3200) Phaethon and Multiple Small Bodies

Abstract

DESTINY + is an upcoming JAXA Epsilon medium-class mission to flyby the Geminids meteor shower parent body (3200) Phaethon. It will be the world's first spacecraft to escape from a near-geostationary transfer orbit into deep space using a lowthrust propulsion system. In doing so, DESTINY + will demonstrate a number of technologies that include a highly efficient ion engine system, lightweight solar array panels, and advanced asteroid flyby observation instruments. These demonstrations will pave the way for JAXA's envisioned low-cost, high-frequency space exploration plans. Following the Phaethon flyby observation, DESTINY + will visit additional asteroids as its extended mission. The mission design is divided into three phases: a spiralshaped apogee-raising phase, a multi-lunar-flyby phase to escape Earth, and an interplanetary and asteroids flyby phase. The main challenges include the optimization of the many-revolution low-thrust spiral phase under operational constraints; the design of a multi-lunar-flyby sequence in a multi-body environment; and the design of multiple asteroid flybys connected via Earth gravity assists. This paper shows a novel, practical approach to tackle these complex problems, and presents feasible solutions found within the mass budget and mission constraints. Among them, the baseline solution is shown and discussed in depth; DESTINY + will spend two years raising its apogee with ion engines, followed by four lunar gravity assists, and a flyby of asteroids (3200) Phaethon and (155140) 2005 UD. Finally, the flight operations plan for the spiral phase and the asteroid flyby phase are presented in detail.

Sensor electronics design framework with heterogeneous computing edge nodes

“…It has been developed as ground support equipment of DESTINY + . DESTINY + is an engineering and science mission program with distinct but complementary objectives in both disciplines 8,9 . The disciplines are low-cost and high-frequency deep space exploration utilizing small launch vehicles and high-performance deep space probe platforms.…”

Past and Future Comet Missions

“…We include the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) DESTINY + (Demonstration and Experiment of Space Technology for INterplanetary voYage with Phaethon fLyby and dUst Science; Ozaki et al 2022) as a future comet mission as its primary target, near-Earth asteroid (3200) Phaethon, has been demonstrated to have repeated activity at perihelion and is responsible for the Geminid meteor stream (Jewitt and Li 2010;Jewitt et al 2013;Li and Jewitt 2013). Phaethon has been dubbed a 'rock comet' as its orbit is such that water ice is not expected to survive, even in the interior, but at perihelion (0.14 au) it is close enough to the Sun for thermal fracturing and electrostatic lifting of rock to form a dust coma without ice sublimation (Jewitt and Li 2010).…”

“…It has a lot of flexibility in its trajectory and launch window (Sarli et al 2018). DESTINY + is currently expected to launch in 2024 and perform a fast (30 -40 km s −1 ) flyby of Phaethon in 2028 (Ozaki et al 2022). Its primary science goal is to measure dust composition; both interplanetary / interstellar dust during the long cruise, and dust released from Phaethon.…”

Developing a Laser Induced Liquid Beam Ion Desorption Spectral Database as Reference for Spaceborne Mass Spectrometers

“…Other impact ionization mass spectrometers are currently being built, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA; Kempf et al, 2014) or proposed, for example, the ENceladus Ice Analyzer (ENIA; Srama et al, 2015) for future space missions to icy moons in the outer Solar System (e.g., Howell & Pappalardo, 2020;Reh et al, 2016). Another impact ionization mass spectrometer, selected for JAXA's future Destiny + mission (Ozaki et al, 2022) to the asteroid 3200 Phaethon, is the Destiny Dust Analyzer (DDA; Srama et al, 2019). For instrument calibration and data interpretation, laboratory analogue experiments are crucial (e.g., Klenner et al, 2019;Taubner et al, 2020).…”