NEAR overview

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission inaugurates NASA's Discovery Program. It will be the first to orbit an asteroid and will make the first comprehensive scientific measurements of an asteroid's surface composition, geology, physical properties, and internal structure. NEAR was launched successfully on 17 February 1996 aboard a Delta II-7925. It made the first reconnaissance of a C-type asteroid during its flyby of the main-belt asteroid 253 Mathilde in June 1997 and will orbit the unusually large near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros for about a year at a minimum orbit radius of about 35 km from the center of the asteroid. NEAR will obtain new information on the nature and evolution of asteroids, improve our understanding of planetary formation processes in the early solar system, and clarify the relationship between asteroids and meteorites. The NEAR Mission Operations Center and Science Data Center are both located at APL. The latter will maintain the entire NEAR data set on-line and will make data from all instruments accessible over the Internet to every member of the NEAR science team. (Author)