NEAR’s prospects weren’t always so bright. In 1998, engineers lost contact with the craft when it malfunctioned during an engine burn. There was nothing to do but sit and wait for NEAR to right itself–or become a piece of pricey space junk. Luckily, NEAR followed its on-board instructions to the letter, shutting down, recharging and eventually beaming a signal back to Earth. The glitch threw NEAR off track, but it finally settled into orbit around Eros last Valentine’s Day.
Snapping pictures of craters, boulders and dust, NEAR’s cameras uncovered intriguing features. Although space trash probably slams Eros all the time, the asteroid has surprisingly few small craters. And some of the larger craters have been filled in. That suggests that something is shifting dust around on Eros’s surface. But what? The asteroid has no atmosphere, and certainly no water. Other instruments collected data on what Eros is made of. Scientists care about that because an asteroid’s composition might tell us about the early days of the solar system: these rocks are thought to be made of the same stuff from which planets coalesced. Oh, and there’s another reason composition matters: an asteroid rammed into Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If one threatens us, “we’ll need to know what it’s made of before we send up a rocket to divert or detonate it,” says NEAR project manager Thomas Coughlin. One day, then, NEAR may help save our puny planet from annihilation. Since NEAR cost just $223 million, that would be quite a bargain.
