If we needed a reminder that we live in amazing times, we got it last week when a robot explorer named NEAR Shoemaker fired its thrusters and descended toward Asteroid 433 Eros, a place where no machine, let alone any human, had gone before.

NEAR Shoemaker"s Records

First Encounter with a C-Class Asteroid (253 Mathilde) First Spacecraft to Orbit a Small Body (433 Eros) First Spacecraft to Land on an Asteroid (433 Eros)

First Spacecraft Powered by Solar Cells to Operate Beyond 2 AU from the Sun First Mission in NASA"s Discovery Program First Successful Mission to Near-Earth Asteroid First Planetary Mission with Delta-Class Launch Vehicle

On the way down, while millions back on Earth watched, it sent back stunningly detailed pictures, some so close that pebbles only a few inches across were clearly visible. And then, NEAR Shoemaker came to rest on Eros ancient surface and kept transmitting. The moment ranked with the first signals from the surfaces of the Moon, Mars and Venus in decades past. Once again, as we had then, we could all feel humanitys presence extend beyond our home planet, as if we ourselves had made the journey. And in a very real sense, we had.

The credit and the thanks for this fantastic voyage belong to a dedicated team of scientists and engineers, mostly based at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). These men and women, the creators of NEAR Shoemaker, deserve to be called heroes -- not just because they succeeded in their remarkable experiment to make historys first landing on an asteroid, but because they remind us what human beings are capable of at their most ingenious and most determined. And they made it look easy, as if success had always been assured. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

When NASA handed APL the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, the challenge of creating the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid would have been daunting enough. But it was made even more difficult by NASAs requirement to use the "faster, better, cheaper" approach, which limits time and budget to a fraction of what is usual for deep-space missions. Assigned to the job in 1994, the APL team had only two years until the launch window to Eros and they knew Eros would not wait if they missed it.

Remarkably, they responded to the pressure by becoming more focused, more determined to finish in time. They labored not only out of their own desires to succeed, but to avoid letting their teammates down. They surmounted one technical problem after another. And in 1996, they put NEAR aboard a Delta 2 rocket and sent it on its way -- on time and within budget. But even then, their troubles were not over.

NEAR suffered an almost fatal crisis when, after a journey of two years and hundreds of millions of miles (kilometers), it mysteriously went haywire and fell silent. At APL the agony of waiting stretched from hours into days until the spacecraft, acting on its own superb programming, phoned home. And thanks to amazingly quick action by some celestial-mechanics wizards, including Mission Director Robert Farquhar, NEAR was soon on course for a second chance at Eros, a year later.

The rest is now space exploration history. Arriving at Eros on Valentines Day 2000, the spacecraft now re-christened to honor the late planetary scientist Gene Shoemaker began probing the mysteries of this cosmic relic. Long before last weeks landing attempt, NEAR Shoemaker had done its creators proud by sending back a flood of data. But the safe touchdown on Eros brought this saga to a spectacular end. The feat is all the more significant because the craft was never designed to land anywhere. With it, the NEAR mission team exceeded already lofty expectations.

Before NEAR Shoemaker, Eros was only a faint point of light in the largest telescopes. Now it is a place human beings have explored. Like all asteroids, its battered surface holds clues to the early history of the solar system, and for scientists, that is the gift of NEAR Shoemaker. But the team at Johns Hopkins has given a gift to all of us, by reminding us that the old adage, "To the stars, through difficulties," is more than a saying; it is a guidepost. Anyone bold enough to live by those words, as the NEAR Shoemaker team has done, can achieve great things. We at SPACE.com salute them.