Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. It was the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid and land on it successfully. In February 2000, the mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and afterward orbited it several times. On February 12, 2001, the mission succeeded in touching down on the asteroid. It was terminated just over two weeks later. The primary scientific objective of NEAR was to return data on the bulk properties, composition, mineralogy, morphology, internal mass distribution, and magnetic field of Eros. Secondary objectives include studies of regolith properties, interactions with the solar wind, possible current activity as indicated by dust or gas, and the asteroid spin state. This data will be used to help understand the characteristics of asteroids in general, their relationship to meteoroids and comets, and the conditions in the early Solar System. To accomplish these goals, the spacecraft was equipped with an X-ray/gamma-ray spectrometer, a near-infrared imaging spectrograph, a multi-spectral camera fitted with a CCD imaging detector, a laser rangefinder, and a magnetometer. A radio science experiment was also performed using the NEAR tracking system to estimate the gravity field of the asteroid. The total mass of the instruments was , requiring 80 watts of power. Development NEAR was the first robotic space probe built by Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). A previous plan for the mission was for it to go to 4660 Nereus and do a flyby of 2019 van Albada en route. In January 2000, it would rendezvous with Nereus, but instead of staying, it would visit multiple asteroids and comets. Some of the choices that were discussed were 2P/Encke, 433 Eros (which became the mission's primary target), 1036 Ganymed, 4 Vesta, and 4015 Wilson–Harrington. The Small-Body Grand Tour was a plan to visit two asteroids and two comets over a decade with the spacecraft. Mission profile Summary The mission's primary goal was to study the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros from orbit for approximately one year. Eros is an S-type asteroid approximately 13 × 13 × 33 km in size, the second largest near-Earth asteroid. Initially, the orbit was circular with a radius of