NEAR mission to asteroid lands on 454 Keros

Year 16, Day 16

It has just been confirmed by the KSA that the NEAR (New Era Asteroid Runner) probe has just successfully landed on asteroid 454 Keros... really!

 

After the mission to the asteroid launching some hundred days ago or so, it finally arrived last week at 454 Keros, a relatively large, potentially harmful near-Kerbin asteroid (NKA) with a size on the range of Class D objects.

 

As of now, the asteroid does not pose any real risk to Kerbin but is still an object close to Kerbin and orbital paths do change suddenly from collisions and such. But given the asteroid's remote location, any orbital change is extremely unlikely.

 

As for the actual probe, it's meant to orbit and land on an asteroid, specifically built for the conditions of 454 Keros. It's built with four 1x2 solar panels on the top to gain power from the Sun, and has four 100-point batteries as well. As for scientific instruments, it has a gravioli detector for detecting gravity, thermometer, and Mystery Goo containment unit. It also has an RA-2 antenna for transmitting data back to Kerbin, and a KerbPro Deluxe camera for pictures.

 

Now here's the cool part; how it actually lands on the asteroid! It has a small Grabbing Unit Jr. made specifically for it, and uses it to latch itself onto the asteroid's surface and "land" on the asteroid. It then uses two drills it has to further bury itself into the ground AND collect samples to be processed. And after all of this... mission success. Hopefully.

 

And thankfully, it has already been confirmed that the mission was a complete success! This was for some reason a shock to the KSA, who thought the probe would "just snap in half like a toothpick upon landing". And yet, it didn't! And the probe continued serving data for an entire two weeks upon first landing, before Mission Control shut it off.

 

This mission will allow us to know more about how asteroids form, what they're made of (right now, it just seems like rocks and some metal), and how they could pose a risk to Kerbin.

 

Official KSA Article