The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft's global mapping mission - and last long-distance orbit around Eros - ended Dec. 7 with an engine burst that moved the spacecraft several miles closer to the rotating asteroid.

The two-minute maneuver, monitored simultaneously by the NEAR mission operations and navigation teams at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, pushed NEAR Shoemaker from a 124-mile (200-kilometer) vantage point into position to start a circular, 22-mile (35-kilometer) orbit on Dec. 13. The spacecraft will stay at that lower orbit - designed mostly for X-Ray/Gamma-Ray Spectrometer measurements of the asteroid's surface elements - through December and most of January 2001.

NEAR Shoemaker is currently 171 million miles (273 million kilometers) from Earth, conducting the first close-up study of an asteroid. Its yearlong orbit of Eros wraps up in February 2001.

Visit the NEAR home page for complete mission information.

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