A Novel Spacecraft with an Innovative Payload for Deep Space Exploration

  • Shinen2 spacecraft, currently in an elliptical orbit around the Sun, was launched on December 3, 2014, as part of the Hayabusa2 mission (an asteroid exploration mission on a second sample return challenge).
  • Shinen2 spacecraft, designed and built by the Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT-Japan), is a hexagonal shaped, 15-kg, 47 x 49 x 49-cm structure built with light-weight and durable Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) with dual batteries charged by solar panels on each side of the structure and redundant UHF transmission at 437 MHz.
  • Shinen2 proved its success by transmitting data from Moon orbit and beyond. Shinen2’s only payload is a radiation detector designed and built by Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) in collaboration with NASA Johnson Space Center (NASA-JSC), University of Texas (UT-Austin), and University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV).
  • The radiation particle pixel detector (PPD), a 10 x 10 x 10-cm cube structure was designed and developed as: (i) low weight (~ 800 gr), (ii) low power (~ 1 W), (iii) high reliability over few years (~ 5+ years), (iv) high tolerance in deep-space harsh radiation environment for a broad range of temperatures (-50o C to +50o C), and (v) with a unique capability to provide data downlink over a low bit rate communication transmission to Earth (few kilobytes) from deep-space.
  • Our payload, PPD, uses two CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) sensors and custom designed radiation-hardened FPGA (field-programmable gate array) to sustain the deep-space radiation environment with capability to estimate energy and particle flux – typically, 85% of protons and 14% of the alphas of the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) composition in deep space that varies as a function of the solar cycle.PPD

Launch Information:

Watch launch of Hayabusa2: here

Videos from KIT Lab Visit:

v3

First Orientation
v5

Vacuum and Thermal Test
v2

Vibration Test
v1

Eng Model with Materials

 

Read more info about this mission from KIT-Japan: Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT-Japan): Shinen2