The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission

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This text describes the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, its instruments, investigation plans and data center. It contains a complete description of the first launch of NASA’s Discovery missions, a series of low-cost planetary missions. The NEAR spacecraft flew by the asteroid 253 Mathilde in June, 1997 on its way to rendezvous with the asteroid 433 Eros in January, 1999. The instruments described include the multispectral imager by S.E. Hawkins and colleagues, the near-infrared spectrometer by J.W. Hawkins and colleagues, the X-ray and gamma-ray spectrometer by J.O. Goldsten and colleagues, the laser altimeter by T.D. Cole and colleagues, and the magnetometer by D.A. Lohr and colleagues. K. Heeres concludes the book with a discussion of the NEAR Science Data Center. This book should be of interest to all potential users of the observations by the NEAR mission and to those interested in the scientific return from the mission, and in the planning of future such low-cost missions.