Introduction

On 02 February, 1997 in the sci.astro "USENET" forum Van Flandern put forward a prediction regarding the asteroid 433 Eros. This statement included a challenge to astronomers requesting them to give serious consideration to the underlying hypothesis should the prediction be confirmed by observation.

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft is the first launch in the Discovery Program, a NASA initiative for small planetary missions. NEAR is managed for NASA by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. NEAR was launched in February, 1996 atop a Delta II rocket on a mission to rendezvous with 433 Eros, an S-type asteroid with estimated dimensions of 35x15x13 kilometers. NEAR will be the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.

Two asteroids, 951 Gaspra and 243 Ida, were visited by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in 1991 and 1993, respectively. A unique discovery was made when a tiny moon was imaged in orbit around Ida. Unlike the Galileo encounters which were simple flybys at high velocity lasting mere minutes, NEAR will execute a braking maneuver placing it in orbit around Eros for a prolonged close-up inspection. The mission is expected to culminate with NEAR landing on Eros in 2000.

Although the NEAR-Eros challenge has been repeated on numerous occasions no mainstream supporter has been willing to accept the challenge under any terms, even though the terms were open to discussion. This reflects the unfortunate trend in astronomical theories to avoid setting falsification criteria because, if this were done, many favored theories would likely fall.