The process for the selection of MASCOT landing site on Ryugu: Design, execution and results

MASCOT, the Mobile Asteroid Surface SCOuT, is a small Lander jointly developed by the German and French space agencies [Ho a al., 2017], that travelled on board of the JAXA Hayabusa2 spacecraft for over 3 years to the C-type asteroid Ryugu. The goal of MASCOT was to perform in situ measurements on the surface of the asteroid by means of its four scientific instruments, substantially contributing in this way to the overall scientific return of Hayabusa2 mission. The objective of the paper is to provide a detailed overview of the Landing Site Selection Process (LSSP) for MASCOT, from the preliminary design phase that started several years before launch, up to the actual execution of the selection process and its operational implementation. The effort that was put on the LSSP by all the teams involved over all these years was one of the key elements, leading to the unprecedented success of this mission.