Mission planners may use this gentle giant's weak gravity to advantage next month, when they will bring the spacecraft to within 6 km of the surface. Current plans call for a dramatic end to the mission in February, when NEAR-Shoemaker will slowly drop directly onto the surface. The spacecraft was renamed NEAR-Shoemaker in March to honor the late Eugene Shoemaker , a renowned planetary geologist who died in 1997. Mean distance 1.46 a.u. For more information, see the online press release .
North is up.
Click on image for larger view. Days after alerts of possible auroral activity were made earlier this week, another impressive sign of the Sun's peaking magnetic-activity cycle swung into view. An enormous sunspot group has rotated onto the disk. The group is so large that is it visible without magnification to properly protected eyes. Oler notes the giant group will be best seen on the solar disk until September 26th.