NEAR INFRARED SPECTROMETER FOR THE NEAR MISSION 109

Figure 4. Block diagram of NIS.

Figure 5 is a photograph of the instrument on the NEAR spacecraft. The bracket

places NIS in the right orientation to obtain the desired field of regard. The orienta-
tion of the 140 field of regard is shown in Figure 6. The wide field of regard allows
NIS to operate during different phases of the mission. During orbital operations
around Eros, the line of sight will be approximately out the ‘side’ of the spacecraft,
near the line of sight of the imager and other instruments. The boresight reference
for NIS, which is coaligned with the other instrument boresights, is called instru-
ment nadir. The field of view will be pointed (using the scan mirror) in the vicinity
of instrument nadir during the orbital phase. During the flyby phase, the spacecraft
will pass between the asteroid and the Sun at low speed (5 m s 1 nominally) to
measure the gravitational deflection and also to permit NIS data to be acquired
at low phase angle. This requires the line of sight to be positioned approximately
90 in the anti-Sun direction from the instrument nadir. The asteroid will subtend
a small field of view at flyby, so only a few steps will be required to scan across
the asteroid. The maximum limit of the line of sight is 110 anti-Sun of nadir,
permitting flexibility in timing of the 180 roll needed near closest approach. In
the sunward direction, the line of sight can be positioned up to 30 from instrument
nadir. At this position, referred to as the start position, the instrument is viewing
the solar illuminated calibration plaque. Approximately the first 10 from the start
position are not used because they are partially viewing the calibration plaque.