Asteroid Itokawa

[darsie]

It would be nice if Scott Manley had a shape, but it's unknown (right?) and inventing one ... idk.
Itokawa would be cool, though.
We have great imagery of it: Rotation of Asteroid Itokawa
and even a 3-D model of itokawa.
Do we have weak enough thrusters to enter orbit?

ChatGPT suggested these resources:

1. Official 3D shape model​

NASA's Planetary Data System hosts the Gaskell Itokawa Shape Model V1.1, reconstructed by Robert Gaskell from Hayabusa AMICA imagery.

NASA PDS — Gaskell Itokawa Shape Model V1.1

It comes in four resolutions, and vertex/facet versions are provided, so this seems like a much better starting point than reconstructing the asteroid from a video.

DOI: 10.26033/3b2j-yy57

The NASA archive describes it specifically as a shape model of 25143 Itokawa derived from Hayabusa AMICA images.

2. The original Hayabusa imagery​

NASA's AMICA archive contains 1,662 images from the Hayabusa mission, including the Itokawa encounter.

NASA Data.gov — HAYABUSA AMICA V1.0

There is also a PDS dataset containing 1,339 AMICA images with geometry backplanes, which could potentially be useful for generating/improving a surface texture.

NASA PDS — AMICA Images with Geometry Backplanes

That's a 6.8 GB PDS4 dataset, so there's a lot more usable source material than just the famous public images.

3. JAXA's original Hayabusa archive​

JAXA explicitly says that the precise Itokawa shape model was released publicly along with the Hayabusa data.

JAXA — Public release of the Hayabusa data archives