nearness

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited it several times, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid on 12 February 2001.

NEAR or Near may refer to:

• Nicking Enzyme Amplification Reaction, a method for in vitro DNA amplification
• Near-Earth object, an object in the Solar System whose orbit brings it close to the Earth
  • Near-Earth asteroid
  • Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research
• NEAR Shoemaker, a spacecraft that studied the near-Earth asteroid Eros
• Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, a scientific instrument for infrared astronomy
• Near Field Communication (NFC), a short-range wireless communication technology
• N.E.A.R. (National Emergency Alarm Repeater), an obsolete civilian warning device in the United States
• Nearness defined as it relates to Point-Set Topology, also known as proximity space
• "Near", an interactive city browser application developed by NearGlobal