Landing craft MASCOT
Landing craft MASCOT
The Japanese space agency JAXA will send in 2014 the German landing craft Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) to asteroid 1999 JU 3 on board the Japanese orbiter Hayabusa 2. A stable, yet extremely light cover will protect the shoe box-sized lander as it falls to the asteroid's surface. The four instruments designed to conduct in situ measurements on the asteroid are located inside the DLR landing craft: the French infrared spectrometer that will analyse the surface composition and a magnetometer from TU Braunschweig to investigate the magnetic field.
