[OT] End of an Eros Era

Listers,

Today at around 3pm Eastern Time, the NEAR Shoemaker mission will end
with a
"controlled crash" of the spacecraft onto asteroid 433 Eros. NASAS
select
will be covering spacewalks from the ISS instead, but other media (CNN,
Space.com and some others) will be on hand for break-ins etc. Check out
the
NEAR Website for details at 

http://near.jhuapl.edu

Descent activities and images should begin saround 12:30-1pm.

If it has been worked out, "near-live" images from the descent will be
put
up on the web minutes after they are made available for the people
attending
the event here at APL.. "Near-live" means images taken by the
spacecraft,
and sent to earth within a minute or so, +17 minutes 1-way light travel
to
early + a few more minutes to recieve and process the image.

Factoid: Contact of NEAR with the surface of Eros will be at around 7
mph.
Images are still going to be taken and relayed (asuming the s/c can do
it)
for some time after "landing", after which the goal is to simply find if
there's any detectable signal from the s/c on the surface.

It's been a great ride. Hope you can check it out if you're interested.