NASA to attempt asteroid landing in February

Illustration of the NEAR-Shoemaker probe

By Richard Stenger
CNN.com Writer

(CNN) -- A deep space robot ship will conclude its scientific mission by deliberately crash-landing on an asteroid next month, according to NASA.

NEAR-Shoemaker will attempt the risky touchdown on asteroid Eros on February 12, two days shy of its first anniversary in orbit around the tumbling asteroid.

But the probe is designed to study Eros, not land.

"If we got lucky, the thing could survive and get a signal saying it landed. But the chances are less than 1 percent. Too many things have to go right," said Bob Farquhar, NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) mission director.

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NEAR scientists are planning the risky descent to gain an unprecedented close-up view of the oddly shaped asteroid. NEAR-Shoemaker could take pictures with resolutions of 10 cm before smacking into a sunlit site near the South Pole.

"Our primary purpose is not to land. Our primary purpose is to get to a very low altitude to take high resolution pictures," said Farquhar, who manages NEAR from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Research Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Scientists hope the landing will yield some extreme close-up images of the asteroid's surface. This image was obtained last February at a range of 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers)

NEAR-Shoemaker has traveled 2 billion miles since it left Earth five years ago. It has conducted an intense geologic study since it began orbiting Eros 11 months ago. The probe has already beamed back some 150,000 images of the Manhattan-sized rock.

Even if NASA managers wanted to, they could not extend the mission because the spacecraft's fuel and the project's budget are nearly spent.

"We have fulfilled all the main goals of the mission. Now we are trying to get a little bonus science," Farquhar said.

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Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission
NASA

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