NEAR Shoemaker became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid when it touched down on 433 Eros in February 2001.
NASA launched the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission in 1996 and later renamed it NEAR Shoemaker to honor planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker. The spacecraft entered orbit around Eros in February 2000 and mapped the asteroid’s shape, surface, geology, and composition.
Although NEAR was designed as an orbiter, mission controllers successfully guided it to a gentle landing on Eros on 12 February 2001. The spacecraft continued transmitting data from the surface for a short period afterward.
This was a landing, not a sample-return mission. Japan’s Hayabusa later landed on and returned samples from asteroid Itokawa, while NASA’s OSIRIS-REx returned samples from Bennu in 2023.