[meteorite-list] NEAR Shoemaker Ready to Gather Data on Surface of Eros

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:41:10 2004
Message-ID: <200102151613.IAA19612_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://near.jhuapl.edu/news/flash/01feb14_2.html

          NEAR Shoemaker Ready to Gather Data on Surface of Eros
          February 14, 2001

          The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft has been commanded to
          begin collecting data from the surface of 433 Eros.

          NASA announced on Feb. 14 it was extending the NEAR
          mission for up to 10 days to gather data from the
          spacecraft's gamma-ray spectrometer, a scientific
          instrument that could provide unprecedented information
          about the surface and subsurface composition of Eros.
          Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University
          Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., have
          configured the instrument to begin collecting and
          recording this information.

          NEAR Mission Operations Manager Robert Nelson said the
          team is also sending commands to prevent the rest of the
          spacecraft from sending data to its onboard recorder,
          since the only reliable telemetry link is through NEAR
          Shoemaker's low-gain antenna. "Now that we have landed,
          collection and recovery of critical gamma-ray data is
          our primary objective," he said.

          NEAR Shoemaker's historic Feb. 12 touchdown on Eros
          turned out to be a mission planner's dream - providing
          NEAR team members with more scientific and engineering
          information than they ever expected from their carefully
          designed series of descent maneuvers. The spacecraft
          gently landed at 3:01:52 p.m. EST, ending a journey of
          more than 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) and a
          full year in orbit around the large space rock.
Received on Thu 15 Feb 2001 11:13:37 AM PST