NEAR Shoemaker Spacecraft Mission Extended – For Ten Days
Just as it seemed that the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft was going to be shut off – it has been given a new lease on life – albeit a short one.
After a year in a close-orbit study of asteroid 433 Eros, a near-Earth asteroid 196 million miles from Earth, the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft landed – something it was not designed to do. The touchdown occurred on Monday at 3:02 PM EST at a speed of approximately 4 mph. Images sent just before touchdown showed rocks only inches across. The spacecraft’s engine was still firing when it hit – the jar of impact was apparently enough to tell the spacecraft’s accelerometers to shut the engines off.
Having accomplished all of its mission objectives – and collecting more than ten times the data in its original mission plan – project managers decided to risk the spacecraft in an attempt to get ultra-close pictures of the asteroid’s surface. A similar approach was used during the U.S. Ranger program when spacecraft were sent plunging towards the moon radioing back TV images up to the last moment before impact.
The spacecraft is sitting on the surface of Eros in a more or less optimal orientation for communication with Earth using the spacecraft’s forward low gain antenna which provides a 10 bit per second data rate (which limits what can be accomplished). The imager has been activated and, although it is not currently taking images, the system is operational.
According to NASA “Yesterday the NEAR mission operations team disabled a redundant engine firing that would have been activated had it been necessary to adjust the spacecraft’s orientation in order to receive telemetry from it. But because NEAR Shoemaker landed with such a favorable orientation, and telemetry has already been received, it was no longer necessary to move the spacecraft from its resting place. “
At a press conference held at 1:00 PM EST today at Johns Hopkins University, NEAR mission managers announced that they would be extending NEAR’s mission for at least 10 days.
Over the coming days the spacecraft’s gamma ray spectrometer will be used to do an ultra-precise analysis of the surface composition of the minerals that comprise Eros. Researchers may be able to determine whether the dust that covers Eros is similar to – or different from what lies underneath. The magnetometer will not be activated.
Related Links
° NEAR February 14, 2001 Press Conference slides, Johns Hopkins University
° Asteroid Mission Not Yet “NEAR” and End, NASA HQ
° NEAR Shoemaker’s Historic Landing on Eros Exceeds Science, Engineering Expectations, Johns Hopkins University
° View the last image of Eros taken by NEAR in the SpaceRef Photo Gallery
° Archived Video Feed from Discovery.com (Real Player)
° Animation of NEAR’s landing on Eros
° End of mission info, Johns Hopkins
Background Information
° NEAR website, Johns Hopkins University
° NEAR Shoemaker Skims Just 3 Miles Over the Surface of Eros
° Asteroids and Comets, SpaceRef Directory
° NEAR Shoemaker Moves Closer to Asteroid 433 Eros, SpaceRef
° Putting NEAR’s Images in Perspective, SpaceRef
° NEAR gets Nearer to Eros, SpaceRef
° NEAR’s Near-Infrared Spectrometer No Longer Works, SpaceRef
° More Color Photos of Eros from NEAR, SpaceRef
° NEAR Rendezvous Burn a Success, SpaceRef
