Let ${mathcal S}_m$ be the set of all $mtimes m$ density matrices (Hermitian positively semi-definite matrices of unit trace). Consider a problem of estimation of an unknown density matrix $rhoin {mathcal S}_m$ based on outcomes of $n$ measurements of observables $X_1,dots, X_nin {mathbb H}_m$ (${mathbb H}_m$ being the space of $mtimes m$ Hermitian matrices) for a quantum system identically prepared $n$ times in state $rho.$ Outcomes $Y_1,dots, Y_n$ of such measurements could be described by a trace regression model in which ${mathbb E}_{rho}(Y_j|X_j)={rm tr}(rho X_j), j=1,dots, n.$ The design variables $X_1,dots, X_n$ are often sampled at random from the uniform distribution in an orthonormal basis ${E_1,dots, E_{m^2}}$ of ${mathbb H}_m$ (such as Pauli basis). The goal is to estimate the unknown density matrix $rho$ based on the data $(X_1,Y_1), dots, (X_n,Y_n).$ Let $$ hat Z:=frac{m^2}{n}sum_{j=1}^n Y_j X_j $$ and let $check rho$ be the projection of $hat Z$ onto the convex set ${mathcal S}_m$ of density matrices. It is shown that for estimator $check rho$ the minimax lower bounds in classes of low rank density matrices (established earlier) are attained up logarithmic factors for all Schatten $p$-norm distances, $pin [1,infty]$ and for Bures version of quantum Hellinger distance. Moreover, for a slightly modified version of estimator $check rho$ the same property holds also for quantum relative entropy (Kullback-Leibler) distance between density matrices.
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