NEAR Shoemaker is a spacecraft launched in 1996 by NASA to perform a study of the near-Earth asteroid Eros. It was the first spacecraft to perform a rendezvous with an asteroid and also the first to orbit and then land on an asteroid.

NEAR Shoemaker successfully touched down on the surface of Eros on February 12, 2001, and continued to study the asteroid until December 2005 when it was purposefully crashed onto the surface of Eros to end its mission.