At 1 p.m., today, a 2-minute hydrazine engine burn put the NASA Discovery Program's NEAR spacecraft, on a direct path to intercept asteroid 433 Eros early next year. Commands from the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission Operations Center at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., were carried out flawlessly by the spacecraft.

Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins University 12 August 1999 "The burn was a good test of the orbit correction process we will be using when we reach Eros," says Mark E. Holdridge, NEAR Mission Operations Manager. "We'll be using the same flight software and systems to put us into orbit around the asteroid so we're really pleased to see how well they worked." The burn was the last scheduled major trajectory correction of the mission. It slowed the spacecraft's velocity by just over 10 mph (4.5 meters per second) to about 188 mph (84.2 meters per second) relative to Eros.

Robert W. Farquhar, NEAR Mission Manager says, "We had to complete this burn in order to reach Eros on February 14, 2000. Without it we would have missed the asteroid by about 106,000 miles."