May 9 1992
From The Space Library
A research arm of Johns Hopkins University was chosen to design a spacecraft intended to take the first close-up look at the kind of asteroid that could one day collide with Earth. Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, was given a $450,000 contract by NASA for preliminary work on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous satellite, called NEAR. If NASA and Congress approved construction of the compact $150 million spacecraft, it could begin orbiting an asteroid called "nereus" in January 2000. (B Sun, May 9/92)
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