NASA’s Historic Journey to the Surface of an Asteroid

In ‘This Week in History,’ NASA’s new Discovery Program aimed to meet budget constraints while exceeding scientific expectations.

An illustration of NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft at asteroid Eros. NASA

On the evening of Aug. 13, 1898, Gustav Witt, the German astronomer and director of the Urania Observatory in Berlin, and his assistant, Felix Linke, planned to locate the asteroid, Eunike. It had been nine years since its last observation. By use of the observatory’s telescope and photographic plates, Witt and Linke scoured the images. They found Eunike, as well as another previously known asteroid, Althrea.

German astronomer Gustav Witt who discovered a new asteroid in 1898. Public Domain