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Earth, Planets and Space

Table 1 Overview and compilation of the entire sample processes from implementation to engineering development and assessment for quality control for the safety declaration of the Ryugu sample

From: Environmental assessment in the prelaunch phase of Hayabusa2 for safety declaration of returned samples from the asteroid (162173) Ryugu: background monitoring and risk management during development of the sampler system

The assessment status

Location

Date

Profile

Refs.

Implementation plan and practical preparation

ISAS

2010 ~ Nov-2013

New framework of the sampler with lessons and feedback from Hayabusa mission

Tachibana et al. (2014)

Insight for future curation process

Uesugi et al. (2014), Karouji et al. (2014)

Development of volatile gas sampling system

ISAS

2010 ~ Nov-2013

Metal-seal system for vacuum encapsulation

Okazaki et al. (2017)

Environmental assessment during the sampler development

ISAS/TSC/TNSC

Nov-2013–Dec-2014 (vacuum test in July-2014)

The sampler development, the spacecraft assembly rooms, the vehicle assemble building (STA, SFA, VAB)

This study

Thermal vacuum tests of the spacecraft

Thermal vacuum test with the vibration test

Sawada et al. (2017), This study

Environmental assessment before the launch

TNSC

 ~ 3-December-2014

 

This study

Touchdown sampling (TD1)

The asteroid Ryugu

22-February-2018

Projector operation (1) during TD1

Sawada et al. (2017), Morota et al. (2020)

Takano et al. (2020)

Small-carry on impactor (SCI)

The asteroid Ryugu

3-April-2019

SCI operation

Saiki et al. (2017), Arakawa et al. (2020)

Ito et al. (2021)

Touchdown sampling (TD2)

The asteroid Ryugu

11-July-2019

Projector operation (2) during TD2 near the SCI-made creator

Sawada et al. (2017)

Takano et al. (2020)

Reentry capsule retrieval operation

Woomera, Australia

6-December-2020

Sample recovery and onsite gas extraction

Okazaki et al. (2017), Sawada et al. (2017)

Gas sampling and analysis by GAEA

Woomera, Australia

 ~ 8-December-2020

Onsite analysis by GAEA

Tachibana et al. (2021)

Safety declaration of Ryugu sample

Tachibana et al. (2021), This study

Curation procedure

ISAS

Dec-2020 ~ present

Sample curation

Yada et al. (2021a, 2021b), Yoshitake et al. (2021)

Tachibana et al. (2021), Sugahara et al. (2018)

ISAS to designated place

Jun-2021 ~ present

Sample distribution

e.g., Ito et al. (2020)

Shirai et al. (2020), Uesugi et al. (2020)

  1. More details are provided in the following key references: Tachibana et al. (2014), Uesugi et al. (2014), Okamoto et al. (2015), Okazaki et al. (2017), Saiki et al. (2017), Sawada et al. (2017), Sugahara et al. (2018), Uesugi et al. (2019), Arakawa et al. (2020), Ito et al. (2020), Morota et al. (2020), Shirai et al. (2020), Takano et al. (2020), Uesugi et al. (2020), Ito et al. (2021), Tachibana et al. (2021), Yada et al. (2021a), Yoshitake et al. (2021). For the general protocol adopted for the spacecraft’s thermal vacuum test, see JAXA (2021) JERG-2–130-HB005B and Sawada et al. (2017). A process blank was obtained during gas sampling and analysis by the GAEA (GAs Extraction and Analyses system) at Woomera (Miura et al. 2022)
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