Intelligent rover with hopping mechanism for asteroid exploration

In recent years, small body exploration missions have received a lot of attention. JAXA completed Hayabusa mission in 2010 and succeeded in getting samples from the asteroid. JAXA is also developing the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, the post sample return mission to a near-earth asteroid. A novel and tiny hopping rover called MINERVA was installed into Hayabusa spacecraft. Then, with these experiences, some rover packages are under development for Hayabusa2 spacecraft. The mission concept is the same as MINERVA, but multiple rover system is introduced. Because the target asteroid parameters may be different from the previous target in Hayabusa mission, the rover system is newly designed in Hayabusa2 mission. This paper describes the challenge of mobilizing a robotic probe for small body surface exploration. This paper proposes a hopping mechanism and shows the effectiveness of the proposed hopping robot by micro gravity experiments. This paper also discusses the required intelligence for small body exploration robot.