page_title: NEAR Shoemaker
section_title: Orbital insertion
hierarchical_section_title: NEAR Shoemaker / Mission profile / Orbital insertion
caption_attribution_description: English: NEAR trajectory
context_page_description: The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker, renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited it several times, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid on February 12, 2001.
  The primary scientific objective of NEAR was to return data on the bulk properties, composition, mineralogy, morphology, internal mass distribution and magnetic field of Eros. Secondary objectives include studies of regolith properties, interactions with the solar wind, possible current activity as indicated by dust or gas, and the asteroid spin state. This data will be used to help understand the characteristics of asteroids in general, their relationship to meteoroids and comets, and the conditions in the early Solar System.
context_section_description: Orbital insertion around Eros occurred on February 14, 2000 at 15:33 UT (10:33 AM EST) after NEAR completed a 13-month heliocentric orbit which closely matched the orbit of Eros. A rendezvous maneuver was completed on February 3 at 17:00 UT, slowing the spacecraft from 19.3 to 8.1 m/s relative to Eros. Another maneuver took place on February 8 increasing the relative velocity slightly to 9.9 m/s. Searches for satellites of Eros took place on January 28 and February 4 and 9; none were found. The scans were for scientific purposes and to mitigate any chances of collision with a satellite. NEAR went into a 321×366 km elliptical orbit around Eros on February 14. The orbit was slowly decreased to a 35 km circular polar orbit by July 14. NEAR remained in this orbit for 10 days and then was backed out in stages to a 100 km circular orbit by September 5, 2000. Maneuvers in mid-October led to a flyby of Eros within 5.3 km of the surface at 07:00 UT on October 26.
caption: Trajectory graphic depicting the voyage of the NEAR spacecraft.
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