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Low-Cost Innovation in Spaceflight: The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker MissionOn a spring day in 1996, at their research center in the Maryland countryside, representatives from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) presented Administrator Daniel S. Goldin of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with a check for $3.6 million. 1 Two and a half years earlier, APL officials had agreed to develop a spacecraft capable of conducting an asteroid rendezvous and to do so for slightly more than $122 million. This was a remarkably low sum for a spacecraft due to conduct a planetaryclass mission. By contrast, the Mars Observer spacecraft launched in 1992 for an orbital rendezvous with the red planet had cost $479 million to develop, while the upcoming Cassini mission to Saturn required a spacecraft whose total cost was approaching $1.4 billion. In an Agency accustomed to cost overruns on major missions, the promise to build a planetary-class spacecraft for about $100 million seemed excessively optimistic.
Document ID
20050159707
Acquisition Source
Headquarters
Document Type
Book
Authors
McCurdy, Howard E.
(NASA Headquarters Washington, DC United States)
Date Acquired
September 7, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2005
Subject Category
Spacecraft Design, Testing And Performance
Report/Patent Number
LC-2004018515
NASA/SP-2005-4536
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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