Review: Asteroid Rendezvous: Near Shoemaker's Adventures at Eros

Asteroid Rendezvous: Near Shoemaker's Adventures at Eros by Jim Bell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this age of right-wing ignoramuses, we should remember that with our flyby of Pluto the United States is the only nation on Earth to have sent probes on successful flybys and exploration of every planet in the Solar System, a fact we can take just pride in. to this we may add NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker mission to the asteroid Eros in 2000. It may have been 18 years ago, but in spite of some close shaves, NEAR Shoemaker made passes at two asteroids, first at Mathilde in 1997 and later at Eros, basically a giant space peanut.

The firsts kept coming: NEAR was the first spacecraft flyby of a C-type asteroid [Mathilde], the first to orbit an asteroid {Eros] and finally to land safely on the surface of an asteroid and return scientific readings from its surface. This is more impressive than it sounds since Eros is such an irregularly shaped space rock. Different members of the NEAR exploratory probe team each offer their own perspectives. Some of their finding overlap, but this serves to highlight different aspects of the mission’s goals.

This slim volume is not necessarily for the scientifically challenged, but it remains a satisfactory read for the technically minded. I’ll conclude with this observation from NEAR science team member Jim Bell: “Are asteroids nothing more than insignificant cosmic leftovers? Ask a dinosaur.”

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