Speakers

Michele Dougherty

Head of the Physics Department at Imperial College London and a Fellow of the Royal Society

Michele Dougherty is Head of the Physics Department at Imperial College London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She was the Cassini magnetometer Principal Investigator and with her team discovered outgassing of water vapour from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. She is Principal Investigator for the magnetometer on the ESA JUICE spacecraft, due for launch to Jupiter and its moons in 2022.

New aspects of the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn

The focus for the search for liquid water within our solar system has expanded in the last 20 years to include the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Our understanding of the magnetospheres of these two planets and their moons has greatly increased following the orbital spacecraft missions at these two giant planets. This orbital exploration began with the Galileo spacecraft at Jupiter from 1995-2003, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft at Saturn from 2004-2017 and the Juno spacecraft which began its orbital tour at Jupiter in 2016. Discoveries from all of these orbital planetary missions will be described as well as comparisons made between the two giant systems.

Hitoshi Kuninaka

Director General, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Vice President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Dr Hitoshi Kuninaka researches the plasma interaction of satellites and develops electric propulsions. He participated in the satellite project, Space Flyer Unit, from 1988 to 1996 and successfully brought it back to Earth via Space Shuttle STS-72. Microwave discharge ion engines, which were invented and developed by Dr Kuninaka, took Hayabusa explorer on a round-trip journey between Earth and an asteroid from 2003 to 2010. The engines also have been propelling Hayabusa2 explorer toward another asteroid since 2014.

The Status of Hayabusa 2 Asteroid Explorer and Its Results

JAXA has completed the space mission of Hayabusa asteroid sample return from 2003 to 2010. The retrieved capsule contained a lot of particles originating from the S-type asteroid Itokawa. Hayabusa 2 project was initiated in 2011 for the sample return from a C-type asteroid Ryugu. The bus system is designed more robustly than the original. The spacecraft was launched by H2A rocket December 2014 and then achieved rendezvous with the asteroid in June 2018 after the orbital maneuver by ion engines in 3.5 years. Three robots of MINERVAs and MSCOT successfully landed on and sent back pictures of the asteroid surface in close-up.

The detail localization and mapping of the surface identified several points for the touch-down and the sample collection. On February 2019 Hayabusa 2 bravely tried the first touch-down and scattered a lot of fragments, some of which might be collected by Hayabusa 2, from the surface. The spacecraft fired the impactor and made an artificial crater with 10m diameter in April 2019. The second touch-down was executed beside the new crater in July. Hayabusa 2 will come back Earth at Woomera Australia on December 2020.