February 1, 2001. Copyright 2001. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

PROBE SET TO LAND ON COSMIC PEANUT

LONDON, February 1, Graphic News: JUST in time for ValentineÕs Day, NASA mission controllers will make the first ever attempt to land a spacecraft on an asteroid.

The space probe called NEAR-Shoemaker is set to drop to its final resting place on peanut-shaped Eros, named after the Greek god of love, on February 12. But the maneuver will not be easy -- the craft was not designed to land.

If all goes perfectly, the 1,100-pound (500kg) craft will send pictures back to Earth as it drops from its asteroid orbit onto ErosÕ rocky surface, perhaps bouncing slightly before resting on its side.

Officials hope the craftÕs antenna will point toward Earth after landing and its solar power panels will continue to make electricity to allow the robot craft to send back signals.

If the landing should fail, officials said the NEAR could smash into Eros and be forever silent.

NEAR-Shoemaker -- which stands for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous and also honours the late astronomer Gene Shoemaker -- was launched on February 17, 1996 into an independent solar orbit. The spacecraft eventually slipped into its orbit of Eros on ValentineÕs Day last year. Since then it has taken more than 160,000 images of the barren space rock.

NEAR is the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid, which makes it part of the effort to catalog 90 percent of all potentially lethal space rocks with a diameter of 0.6 mile (1 km) or more. That effort is expected to be complete in 2008.

ÒWeÕve really begun the in-depth reconnaissance of so-called near-Earth objects,Ó said Ed Weiler, NASA chief scientist. ÒThese are objects that in the past have caused some bad days for some species on the Earth, namely the dinosaurs.Ó

A large asteroid smashed to Earth 65 million years ago and is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Such an asteroid impact on Earth could happen again, said Weiler. ÒWe consider it our responsibility to learn as much as we can about these objects,Ó he said.

Eros, which is is 21 miles (33.6 km) wide by eight miles (12.8 km) deep, might eventually hit Earth, but not for at least 1.5 million years. It is now more than 196 million miles (315 million km) away.

ÒNEAR has been a total success story,Ó said Weiler. The whole project was built and operated under a faster-better-cheaper philosophy developed at NASA. Under the direction and control of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, it took only 26 months to design, build and launch the craft. NEAR is also the first deep-space mission to be operated by a non-NASA space center. The mission cost $223 million, a modest amount by space-exploration standards.

Weiler said NEAR has significantly advanced the scientific understanding of asteroids, knowledge that could one day be invaluable for the EarthÕs safety.

Asteroids and other near-Earth objects are believed to be fragments of the early solar system, and may give clues about how Earth and other planets formed.
/ENDS
Sources: NASA, Reuters, Associated Press