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Morning News

Unmanned Space Probe Returning Pictures From Asteroid Surface; Scientists Consider Final 'Hop'

Aired February 13, 2001 - 11:03 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Now to a giant potato-shaped rock tumbling through space. The unmanned NASA space probe that managed the first-ever soft landing on an asteroid yesterday is along for the ride.

CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien is at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, following the mission, which is rapidly running out of time, huh, Miles?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: It's running out of time. As a matter of fact, NASA will pull the plug on the so-called deep space network, which is the ground tracking network that allows the team here at the Applied Physics Laboratory to phone and communicate with the spacecraft. That plug will be pulled 7:00 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow, Valentine's Day.

So they have a little window to do some science, because on this astounding day after, the control room screens there in the room right next to me are filled with data from a spacecraft that survived this descent.

Now, the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft is designed as an orbiter. Doesn't have any feet, wasn't designed to land. And yet that's precisely what it did yesterday, coming down for a soft touchdown on the asteroid Eros, an asteroid it had been orbiting for a year.

And these are some of the images that it sent back down as it was headed to its touchdown. These are pictures of an asteroid surface that are unprecedented. Scientists will spend years combing through them. It gives them resolution down to one centimeter.

Here's some animation. When reporters saw this animation, we almost chuckled. We thought that little soft touchdown was a bit unrealistic. As it turns out, that's probably very likely what happened. I guess life imitated art in this case.

So, what next for Shoemaker NEAR? Well, the team has a lot of things they're thinking about, but chief among them is the possibility of taking a short hop flight, firing up the thrusters and lifting off and seeing how they can control that flight and control another landing. Is it possible they can maintain contact with it throughout that? Will they be able to see some other locations along the way? Will the camera still be working? Lots of unanswered questions. That's what's in play right now today as they look at the data.

But that flight will not happen today, we're told. They will spend the day looking at the telemetry, making sure they feel confident they understand the health and well-being of their little spacecraft. And then tomorrow midday, they'll announce whether they're going to try this little hop of a flight. There's a 1:00 p.m. Eastern time news conference.

Whatever they do, they'll have to do it tomorrow because, after that, the fun will end -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Miles. Well, with regard to those pictures, we didn't see those last hour that they took on the asteroid. Anything from first glance that looked interesting to the scientists or even you?

O'BRIEN: Well, it didn't settle many debates. There's still this ongoing debate: Is it a dirty surface, a lot of soil, or is it sort of a hard-packed surface? And I had two scientists with me yesterday. And each looking at these pictures said it buttressed their opposite opinions.

So this is going to be something that will take a long time to figure out. You look at it. You make your own decision. Is that hard-packed or is that dirt? Scientist are obviously -- have more trained eyes than we do. But if you look at certain places, you can see what appears to almost be sand. And then if you look in other places, it almost looks like a hard-packed mud.

So all of these images will be compared to the ones that have been taken over the past year. And in the end, maybe, maybe these scientists will be able to figure this all out.

PHILLIPS: It'll be interesting to see what it tells us about our universe. Thanks, Miles.

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