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Loading contentNASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid (433 Eros, 2000) and the first to soft-land on one (2001).
space_mission:near-shoemakerDataset membership
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Scientific entity. See the evidence framework and authority dashboard.
How NEAR Shoemaker connects across Asteria Star — scientific, cultural, and astrological links are kept separate.
A near-Earth asteroid orbited by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker.
A spacecraft that enters orbit around a small body to map it globally over time — NEAR at Eros, Dawn at Vesta and Ceres, Rosetta at comet 67P.
A spacecraft that matches a small body's orbit and stays with it for an extended study, rather than flying past. Rendezvous enables detailed mapping and, often, orbiting or landing.
A spacecraft (or a deployed element) that touches down on a small body's surface — Philae on comet 67P, NEAR on Eros, and the touchdown sampling of Hayabusa and Hayabusa2.
A spacecraft that passes a small body once at high speed, gathering images and data during a brief encounter. Flybys are the cheapest way to reach a new target — Giotto at Halley, Deep Space 1 at Borrelly, Lucy at the Trojans.
A highly reliable medium-lift workhorse that launched GPS satellites and many NASA planetary missions, including the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity and the Kepler telescope.
Extended operations close to the body — global mapping, orbiting, and selecting sites for a landing, sampling, or impact.
A NASA mission at the Sun–Earth L1 point that measures the solar wind and energetic particles upstream of Earth, giving roughly an hour of warning before disturbances reach the planet.
ESA's Asteroid Impact Mission — the original European orbiter half of the AIDA collaboration, meant to observe the DART impact in real time. It was not funded in 2016, but its science was largely revived and reshaped as the Hera mission.
Apollo 11 was the NASA mission that in July 1969 first landed humans on the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the lunar surface.
Apollo 13's planned lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen-tank explosion; the crew returned safely in a celebrated rescue.
Apollo 17 was the final crewed Apollo lunar landing, carrying the first scientist-astronaut to the Moon.
Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to leave Earth orbit and orbit the Moon, returning the famous 'Earthrise' photograph.
Facts on this topic will be cited from these primary and reference sources.
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.
Orbital data, ephemerides, and small-body parameters for planets, asteroids, and comets.