Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 29 January 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5402, p. 621
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5402.621
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News Focus

SPACE:
NEAR's Risky Embrace With Eros

Gary Taubes

Last month, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous space probe, known as NEAR, ignored all messages from its mission controllers for a crucial 27 hours and went speeding past its target. The interruption did not scuttle the mission, but it did deprive space aficionados, at least for the coming year, of witnessing one of the more elegant demonstrations of the art of spacecraft navigation and mission design: easing a car-sized probe into orbit around an oddly shaped asteroid about 1 billionth the mass of Earth.

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)