System Design and Preliminary Analysis of the UQ Near Infrared Spectroscopy Data of the Hayabusa2 Re-entry

In December 2020 University of Queensland researchers participated in a University of Southern Queensland led flight observation of the re-entry of the Japanese Hayabusa2 Sample Return Capsule over Woomera in the Australian outback. This paper presents details of the system which University of Queensland researchers used to take spectral data of the entry and some preliminary results from the instruments. The University of Queensland system consisted of two grism spectrometers focusing on slightly different regions of the visible and near infrared wavelength spectrum. One spectrometer was operated with a fixed exposure time and the other was operated using software which allowed it to select its own exposure time based on the brightness of the previous image, in real time. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time a camera with an autonomous exposure time has been used in a re-entry observation mission. The system worked, however, the specified maximum exposure time was slightly too long, so the images often blurred instead of reducing their exposure time. Around 400 images with a spectrum were captured between the two spectrometers from 17:28:56 to 17:29:16 UTC. Preliminary analysis is presented here and analysis is ongoing.