Spacecraft due to land on asteroid

　　Scientists prepared for a series of rocket firings Monday that would send a 1,100-pound spacecraft toward a space rock known as Eros in man's first attempt to la nd an object on an asteroid.

　　COLUMBIA, Md.—Failure to slow the craft to a speed of 3 to 5 miles per hour could send it crashing into th e surface of Eros, 196 million miles from Earth, or bou ncing off into space. The ship was never designed to la nd.

　　"We're anticipating a really good day but we're rea dy for anything," Robert Farquhar, the NEAR mission dir ector, said on NBC's "Today."

　　"We have completed our primary mission and it's bee n very successful and now we're trying to get a little bonus science. And yes, it's a little risky and it's a very complicated set of engine burns," he said. "But we feel at this moment in the mission, the only risk is no t taking one, because we're going to get a lot of reall y good science if this comes off."

　　NEAR, for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, was launc hed five years ago and has been in a 15-mile orbit of E ros, its cameras taking thousands of pictures of the 21 -mile-long asteroid.

　　Shaped like a tin can with solar panels attached, t he craft was programmed to continue taking pictures as it descended from orbit. If all goes well, it could con tinue sending signals to Earth for another three months .

　　NEAR traveled more than 2 billion miles during its five-year mission. It was launched Feb. 17, 1996, into an independent solar orbit. NEAR swung by the Earth onc e to pick up speed and then streaked outward toward Ero s, an asteroid in an elongated orbit that swings out to near Mars and back close to Earth's orbit.

　　NEAR was built and operated under the direction and control of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The mission is the first to deep space to b e operated by a space center not run by the National Ae ronautics and Space Administration. (AP)