NEAR Sends Back Images of Eros
Despite an aborted engine burn that postponed the January 1999, rendezvous of the NEAR spacecraft with asteroid Eros, mission operations team members were able to quickly upload new commands to the spacecraft, making it possible to obtain valuable information during a December 23, flyby of the asteroid.
(December 24, 1998, 2 p.m. EST)Science data, including multicolor images, spectral data, and magnetic field measurements taken during the flyby, are now coming into the Applied Physics Laboratory's NEAR Science Data Center. Doppler navigation data and real-time telemetry were collected that will help determine the mass of the asteroid.
The flyby gave NEAR Mission Operations an opportunity to test tracking and instrument sequences in preparation of a rendezvous event, says Mission Operations Center Manager Mark Holdridge. "The flight recorders, full of Eros science data, are being played back at the present time. The spacecraft is healthy and doing just fine and it has been confirmed that the flyby pointing and instrument command sequence executed flawlessly to completion."
In addition to flyby data processing, team members are also studying data sent by the spacecraft soon after contact with it was reestablished on Dec. 22, following 27 hours of communication blackout to determine the exact nature of the software anomaly that led to the rendezvous burn failure.
NEAR and Eros are now traveling in separate orbits around the sun as plans are being made for a rendezvous sometime between August 1999 and April 2000.
Images of Eros taken during the flyby are being posted on the NEAR Web site as they are processed.
