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Space-age love tap
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A VALENTINE Day get-together was pushed forward two days as a spacecraft yesterday morning bounced to a halt on the Eros asteroid, a chunk of space rock the size of central London rolling around the Sun 320 million kilometres from Earth.
Against all odds, the NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) Shoemaker probe landed on the peanut-shaped rock at 4.07am (Beijing Time), after a descent that Nasa called a “nothing to lose” afterthought to the craft's five-year-long mission that has cost US$223 million.
Although it was never designed to land, it survived the impact and continued to transmit data to mission control in Maryland, the United States. Nasa has no plans to retrieve the double decker bus-sized craft.
The craft, which has been gathering thousands of images of the 34-km long asteroid, had faced a dreary drift into oblivion as it ran out of fuel. At the last moment Nasa decided to let it go out with a bang.
It is the first rendezvous between a spacecraft and an asteroid. The main aim is to film close-up images of the asteroid.
Scientists also hope that the landing techniques learnt will prove useful if it is necessary to use a nuclear weapon to try to blast or deflect an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. An asteroid smaller than Eros is thought to have wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago. (SD-Xinhua)
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