Landing Site Selection

The Hayabusa2 team held a landing site selection conference on 17 August 2018, selecting candidate sites for the spacecraft, the German-built MASCOT lander, and the MINERVA-II mini-landers. MINERVA-II will land first, and it was important to select candidate landing sites for MASCOT and Hayabusa2 in order to make sure the more capable spacecraft got first dibs on their preferred locations.

Landing sites for the spacecraft had to be within 200 meters north or south of the equator to ensure adequate spacecraft tracking. Other criteria included restrictions on slope, surface roughness, boulder heights, and temperatures at landing time. The process (described in great detail in the press conference slides) yielded the selection of a primary site and two backup sites.

With the spacecraft landing sites picked, the team moved on to MASCOT. Because the lander will hop once to a second location, they have to select large landing regions. The MASCOT team came up with six potential sites, ranking them in order of priority, most of them in the southern hemisphere.

Finally, the team picked places for the four MINERVA-II microrovers, selecting several possible locations in the northern hemisphere.

Here's a map of the highest-ranked landing sites: