Asteroid Rendezvous: NEAR Shoemaker鈥檚 Adventures at Eros edited by Jim Bell and Jacqueline Mitton, Cambridge University Press, 拢27.95, $30, ISBN 0521813603 Reviewed by David Hughes
SOME space missions fail, others go as planned, and a few 鈥� very few 鈥� exceed all expectations. NEAR Shoemaker was in this last category. It was one of the first NASA Discovery missions. Remember the mantra: faster, better, cheaper? It was launched on 17 February 1996 towards 433 Eros, a 33-kilometre-long, bent- peanut-shaped asteroid with an orbit crossing that of Mars.
The 鈥淣EAR鈥� stands for near-Earth asteroid rendezvous. Spacecraft had flown speedily past a few asteroids before, but NEAR was going to orbit around one. And its path was eventually going to bring the spacecraft within skimming distance of the asteroid鈥檚 surface, taking detailed colour images of every nook and cranny.
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On 27 June 1997, on its way to Eros, the spacecraft flew to within 1200 kilometres of asteroid 253 Mathilde. Astrogeologist Eugene Shoemaker of the US Geological Survey, the co-finder of 800 asteroids and the main promoter of the NEAR mission, died soon after. (His name was added to NEAR in remembrance.)
All six instruments worked and 160,000 images were taken. Every boulder was scrutinised. Much was learned by comparing the dark, carbonaceous surface of the low-density rubble pile that is Mathilde with the amazingly uniform composition and colour of the brighter, silicate-rich monolith Eros. The low point of the mission was the failure of the first attempt to place the spacecraft into an orbit around Eros. The high point was the final parking of the spacecraft, on 12 February 2001, on the rim of the crater Himeros.
Jim Bell and Jaqueline Mitton have overseen the production and collection of nine personal essays. So you will find that the opinions of the mission director vie with the leader and members of the science team. Asteroid specialists debate the findings. Engineers responsible for sequencing the observations wrestle with dynamicists in charge of the navigation. This diversity of views makes the book refreshingly reminiscent of the cut and thrust of space mission planning and execution.
The illustrations are superb, with the most astounding images of asteroids obtained so far. Asteroid Rendezvous is a really informative and enjoyable book and a most fitting tribute to an astoundingly successful space mission.