Fifteen years ago today — February 17, 1996 — the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft launched on a Delta-II rocket out of Cape Canaveral.
(NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft. NASA image.)
The spacecraft was renamed NEAR-Shoemaker in honor of astronomer Gene Shoemaker, and was sent on its way to the asteroid Eros.
NEAR-Shoemaker flew by the asteroid 253 Mathilde on June 27, 1997, made a gravity-assist maneuver around Earth on January 23, 1998, flew by Eros on 23 December 1998, and finally entered into a tight orbit around Eros on (appropriately enough) Valentine’s Day 2000. As we noted a few days ago, after a year of observations NEAR-Shoemaker landed on Eros on February 12, 2001.
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