Latest NEAR Shoemaker Stories

Europe -- Venus Express mission controllers at ESA's Space Operations Centre (ESOC) are in intensive preparation for an 11 April arrival at the spacecraft's namesake destination.The critical manoeuvre will involve a deft combination of basic physics, expert spacecraft engineering and precise timing.Next month's Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) will mark the arrival of the first ESA mission at Venus, one of the Solar System's most enigmatic planets. Orbit insertion comprises a series of...

NASA -- A University of Michigan-led research team has discovered that for the first time in history, scientists will be able to observe how the Earth's gravity will disrupt a massive asteroid's spin. Scientists predict a near-miss when Asteroid 99942 Apophis passes Earth in 2029. An asteroid flies this close to the planet only once every 1,300 years. The chance to study it will help scientists deal with the object should it threaten collision with Earth.Only about three Earth diameters will...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- An asteroid's external features, when analyzed carefully, can say a lot about its interior. So it was while he was mapping the surface of asteroid 433 Eros that Peter Thomas, a senior research associate in astronomy at Cornell University, found a simple solution to an earlier puzzle about the asteroid's composition. Thomas was using images collected by the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission in 2001 to create a digital map of Eros. On the asteroid's surface, predictably...

JPL -- NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft continues to sail through its final checkout, as it hurtles toward comet Tempel 1. Impact with the comet is scheduled for 1:52 a.m. EDT, July 4 (10:52 p.m. PDT, July 3). "The time of comet encounter is near and the major mission milestones are getting closer and closer together," said Rick Grammier, Deep Impact project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "After all the years of design, training and simulations, we...

University of Arizona scientists have discovered why Eros, the largest near-Earth asteroid, has so few small craters.Arizona -- When the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission orbited Eros from February 2000 to February 2001, it revealed an asteroid covered with regolith -- a loose layer of rocks, gravel and dust -- and embedded with numerous large boulders. The spacecraft also found places where the regolith apparently had slumped, or flowed downhill, exposing fresh surface...