I read somewhere they landed a probe on an asteroid is that true?

Question

I read somewhere they landed a probe on an asteroid is that true?

Answer 1

Where have you been for the last few years?  There have been many asteroid missions.

Answer 2

NASA crashed a satalite onto asteroid so they could analize the dust orwhat ever come off of it

ok now let just try to crash a satalite into uranus lol

Answer 3

You seem to have been reading The Sport newspaper again.

Pure unfounded speculation.

Space travel is years in the future yet.

Answer 4

The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on the asteroid (433) Eros in February 2002 after a year spent orbiting the asteroid taking many photos and gathering other data.  Signals were received from the spacecraft for about a week after it touched down.  Presumably it is still sitting there.

http://near.jhuapl.edu/

The Hayabusa spacecraft made two landing attempts on asteroid (25143) Itokawa in November 2005.  The probe was supposed to collect samples and return them to Earth.  Analysis of telemetry data makes it seem doubtful that much if any sample was collected.  Control of the spacecraft was lost in December 2005 but regained a few months later.  In April 2006 the probe began its journey back to Earth.  It is scheduled to arrive in June 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

Answer 5

What is the interest in probing a large boring pebble which isn't geologically active anyway?

Answer 6

NASA crashed a satalite onto asteroid so they could analize the dust orwhat ever come off of it

Answer 7

Kind of. The NEAR mission was not really a lander, but the gravity on an asteroid is so low that they were able to just decelerate out of orbit and let it fall onto the asteroid. It remained intact after landing, still sending signals, but no pictures after touching down.

Answer 8

There are indeed plans to land on an asteroid although it is likely that the lander part of the mission will be dropped :-((