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NEAR Completes Flawless Earth Swingby

John Hopkins University Press Release
Applied Physics Laboratory
23 January 1998
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

                    NEAR COMPLETES FLAWLESS EARTH SWINGBY

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft flew by the Earth this
morning, "right on schedule and right on target," says a jubilant Thomas
Coughlin, Space Programs Manager at The Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory (APL), which manages the NEAR mission. All spacecraft
subsystems worked flawlessly as NEAR swooped around the Earth during a
2-hour visit for a gravity assist that put it onto the correct trajectory
for a Jan. 10, 1999, encounter with asteroid 433 Eros.

The Jan. 22-23 swingby put the United States on watch for its first
naked-eye glimpse of an interplanetary spacecraft. The southern states from
east to west, and especially Hawaii, got the best view because of clear
skies and darkness that made it easier to see sunglints off the spacecraft's
four solar panels. Although closest-encounter data is still being processed,
early indications are that NEAR passed within 336 miles of southwest Iran,
as predicted. (Encounter data will be posted on the NEAR Web page as soon as
it is available.)

The first sighting of NEAR was made at about 1:30 p.m. EST, by an astronomer
in Caussols, France, using a 0.9 meter telescope, as the spacecraft
approached far above the Middle East. When sighted, NEAR was 580,000 miles
from Earth and within a half-mile of its expected location.

Data captured by NEAR instruments will start coming in to the APL Mission
Operations Center in Laurel, Md., about 8 p.m., this evening, says Mark
Holdridge, Mission Operations Director, and scientists expect to release the
first images from the swingby on Monday, Jan. 26.

Today NEAR is taking a series of images of Asia, Africa and Antarctica as it
pulls away from Earth. The images will be combined to make a "movie"
documenting the spacecraft's visit. For the next week NEAR's Multi-Spectral
Imager and its Near-Infrared Spectrograph will be calibrated using proven
measurements of Earth and moon geological features. On Feb. 6 the last of
the instruments will be turned off. Over the next year as NEAR closes in on
Eros scientists and engineers will be developing and testing flight and
ground software for the spacecraft and finalizing procedures for the
yearlong encounter with the asteroid.

NEAR's study of Eros will be the first in-depth examination of a near-Earth
asteroid and is expected to yield information that will help scientists
better understand the evolution of our solar system. NEAR, which is being
tracked by NASA's Deep Space Network, is the first mission in the Space
Agency's Discovery series.

          ---------------------------------------------------------

For more information contact Helen Worth, JHU/APL Office of Public Affairs.
Phone: (301) 953-5113; e-mail: Helen.Worth@jhuapl.edu; fax: (301) 953-6123;
or check the APL NEAR Web page:http://sd-www.jhuapl.edu/NEAR/