A mission concept of Phobos/Deimos exploration

We have been designing the concept of Phobos/Deimos mission using the Japanese H-2 rocket as a first step in asteroid exploration. In planning the mission concept, we focused on development of methods to characterize the materials of Phobos/Deimos. The development of such methods will contribute to both scientific and resource explorations of asteroids. Here we report the preliminary concept of the mission

DECIGO pathfinder

DECIGO pathfinder (DPF) is a milestone satellite mission for DECIGO (DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory), which is a future space gravitational wave antenna. DECIGO is expected to provide fruitful insights into the universe, particularly about dark energy, the formation mechanism of supermassive black holes and the inflation of the universe. Since DECIGO will be an extremely challenging mission, which will be formed by three drag-free spacecraft with 1000 km separation, it is important to increase the technical feasibility of DECIGO before its planned launch in 2024. Thus, we are planning to launch two milestone missions: DPF and pre-DECIGO. In this paper, we review the conceptual design and current status of the first milestone mission, DPF

The Japanese space gravitational wave antenna: DECIGO

DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (DECIGO) is the future Japanese space gravitational wave antenna. DECIGO is expected to open a new window of observation for gravitational wave astronomy especially between 0.1 Hz and 10 Hz, revealing various mysteries of the universe such as dark energy, formation mechanism of supermassive black holes, and inflation of the universe. The pre-conceptual design of DECIGO consists of three drag-free spacecraft, whose relative displacements are measured by a differential Fabry-Perot Michelson interferometer. We plan to launch two missions, DECIGO pathfinder and pre-DECIGO first and finally DECIGO in 2024