Hair, Shane (2024) Enhanced Spectral Image Filtering for Re-entry Spacecraft: Hayabusa Mission. [USQ Project]
Abstract
Arguably, one of the greatest feats of human achievement is space exploration, which has advanced both our understanding of nature and technological innovations. An apparent significant challenge faced in aerospace is hyperbolic re-entry (>11 km/s), where the intense heat radiation generated from atmospheric gas ionisation affects the integrity of any incoming spacecraft. A study done by B Birch et al 2020 used spectrometry as well as Planck's Black Body radiation curve to estimate the surface temperature of the Hayabusa 2 capsule during re-entry. The Hayabusa project was originally facilitated by Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) which was the first agency to extract samples from an asteroid with the Hayabusa 1 and 2 missions. Hayabusa 1 was launched in 2003, however, had multiple issues regarding the degradation of essential components due to radiation. Building on this progress, JAXA launched Hayabusa 2 in 2014, which successfully collected samples from asteroid 162173 Ryugu and returned them to Earth in 2020. B Birch’s study was able to successfully estimate the surface temperature of Hayabusa 2’s capsule, however, notably had a few issues regarding wavelength blur which was due to finite exposure times and motion blur which distorted the spectral lines. This wavelength blur affected the accuracy of irradiance calculations and temperature estimations. This study seeks to address these inaccuracies by eliminating the effects of wavelength blur through the correction of pixel distortion via cross-correlation. The research involved refining existing spectral analysis code and applying the cross-correlation filter to evaluate its effectiveness compared to the original data. Statistical analysis showed significant improvements in spectral data accuracy, with large effect sizes for several spectral lines, although the last three lines showed less improvement, likely due to their relative spectral line width. Future research should adapt the cross-correlation model for temperature estimation, incorporate data from multiple spectral cameras, and explore alternative filtering techniques to further enhance spectral analysis reliability in space capsule re-entry missions. These advancements could therefore greatly improve spectral analysis accuracy in re-entry applications such as the Hayabusa project.
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| Item Type: | USQ Project |
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| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Current – Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Engineering (1 Jan 2022 -) |
| Supervisors: | Birch, Byrenn |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechanical) |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Mar 2026 03:52 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Mar 2026 03:52 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | space exploration; Hayabusa project |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/53043 |
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