The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft — the first to orbit an asteroid — embarks on a series of low-altitude passes over 433 Eros this month in a prelude to its daring February descent to the surface of the ...

An artist's illustration of NASA's NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft at the asteroid Eros. On Feb. 12, 2001, NASA landed a spacecraft on an asteroid! After a five-year mission, the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft ...

(WHTM) — On February 14, 2000, NASA’s deep exploration satellite NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) entered orbit around the asteroid 443 Eros, becoming the first human-made object to orbit an ...

The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft's historic soft landing on asteroid 433 Eros Feb. 12 turned out to be a mission planner's dream - providing NEAR team members with more scientific and engineering ...

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 ...

Stunning close-up views of asteroid 433 Eros from the descending NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft get top billing in a new movie from NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous ...

NASA’s decades-long watch on near-Earth space has revealed a landscape that is far more dynamic, and far more intricate, than early asteroid hunters imagined. Instead of a simple backdrop of rocks ...

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft, NEAR Shoemaker, made space history on 12 February when it became the first object to land on an asteroid. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics ...

NASA’s search for near-Earth oddities has never been about a single dramatic moment, but about a slow, methodical expansion of what counts as “normal” in our cosmic neighborhood. Rather than a fresh ...

WASHINGTON — After a year of circling and taking pictures, the robotic NEAR Shoemaker space probe is set to touch down on asteroid Eros today, the first time any craft has tried to land on a tumbling ...

The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft -- the first to orbit an asteroid -- embarks on a series of low-altitude passes over 433 Eros this month in a prelude to its daring February descent to the surface of the ...

Feb. 12 turned out to be a mission planner’s dream – providing NEAR team members with more scientific and engineering information than they ever expected from the carefully designed series of descent ...