NEAR Shoemaker Unlikely To Take A Final Hop

EROSDAILY

NEAR Engine Firing Deactivated

not going anywhere but around and around the Sun ever more

Laurel - Feb. 13, 2001
The NEAR mission operations team disabled a redundant engine firing today that would have been activated if it became necessary to adjust the spacecraft's orientation in order to receive telemetry from the ground. But because NEAR Shoemaker landed with a favorable orientation, and telemetry has already been received, it is no longer necessary to move the spacecraft from its resting-place on the surface of Eros.

Yesterday, media reports that NEAR would be fired up again in an attempt to have NEAR make a "hop" or two across Eros were discounted as mostly "wishful thinking", said John Hopkins' spokesperson Helen Worth for the NEAR team. Ms Worth told SpaceDaily that it was "highly unlikely" such an attempt will be made.

"Coverage via Deep Space Network ends on Wednesday," said Ms Worth, this is also the day active mission funding ceases, however, "funding for data analysis at John Hopkins' will continue until September this year".

Meanwhile, a day after its gentle touchdown on the surface of an asteroid - a deep-space first - the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft is still communicating with the NEAR team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Mission operators picked up a single frame of telemetry from NEAR Shoemaker's low-gain antenna about 6 hours after the spacecraft's near-perfect landing on Eros, the 21-mile-long asteroid the craft had orbited for the past year.

This information is helping the team assess the overall health and performance of the spacecraft, as team members evaluate ways they could gather additional telemetry and data from the craft. A decision on how to do that could be reached later today.

NEAR Shoemaker touched town on Eros yesterday at 3:02:10 EST, cruising to the asteroid's surface at less than 4 mph. Cheers and congratulations filled the Mission Operations Center at APL, which built the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA, when NEAR Mission Director Robert Farquhar announced, "I'm happy to say the spacecraft is safely on the surface of Eros."

The last image snapped by NEAR Shoemaker was only 394 feet (120 meters) from the asteroid's surface and covered a 20-foot (6-meter) area. NEAR Shoemaker continued to send a signal to Earth, assuring the team that it had landed gently.

The signal was identified by radar science data, and about an hour later was locked onto by NASA's Deep Space Network antennas, which continue to monitor the spacecraft 196 million miles (300 million km) from Earth.

EROSDAILY

NEAR "Lands" On Eros Alive

Laurel - Jan. 12, 2001
The first spacecraft to attempt a landing on an asteroid has survived the initial landing and is sending back data from the surface of the asteroid. Landing was at 3.07pm EST (20.07 UTC) at a speed of 1.5 m/sec (3.36 mph).

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