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February 13, 2001 

COLUMBIA--(AP) - Scientists prepared for a series of rocket firings Monday that would send an 1,100-pound (495-kilogram) spacecraft toward a space rock known as Eros in man's first attempt to land an object on an asteroid.

Failure to slow the craft to a speed of 3 to 5 miles ( 4 to 8 kilometers) per hour could send it crashing into the surface of Eros, 196 million miles (315,364 million kilometers) from Earth, or bouncing off into space. The ship was never designed to land.

"We're anticipating a really good day but we're ready for anything," Robert Farquhar, the NEAR mission director, said on NBC TV.

"We have completed our primary mission and it's been very successful and now we're trying to get a little bonus science. And yes, it's a little risky and it's very complicated set of engine burns," he said. "But we feel at this moment in the mission, the only risk is not taking one, because we're going to get a lot of really good science if this comes off."

NEAR, for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, was launched five years ago and has been in a 15-mile (24-kilometer) orbit of Eros, its cameras taking thousands of pictures of the 21-mile-(34-kilometer)-long asteroid.

Shaped like a tin can with solar panels attached, the craft was programmed to continue taking pictures as it descended from orbit. If all goes well, it could continue sending signals to Earth for another three months.

NEAR was launched Feb. 17, 1996, into an independent solar orbit. NEAR swung by the Earth once to pick up speed and then streaked outward toward Eros, an asteroid in an elongated orbit that swings out to near Mars and back close to Earth's orbit.

NEAR was built and operated under the direction and control of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The mission is the first to deep space to be operated by a space center not run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.