NEAR Historic First Image from Eros Orbit

February 14, 2000, at 10:33 AM EST the NEAR spacecraft was successfully inserted into orbit around 433 Eros, becoming the first artificial satellite of an asteroid. Just over an hour later, NEAR pointed its camera at the asteroid and took this picture from a range of 210 miles (330 km) above the surface. Mission navigators and operators will use this image and others to be taken later to triangulate on landmarks on the asteroid's surface, precisely measuring position of the spacecraft to plot NEAR's course.

Features as small as a 100 feet (30 meters) across can be seen. This view shows the 3-mile (5-kilometer) impact crater which the spacecraft has spied for over a week during its approach. The two smaller craters superimposed on its rim are each about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) across. An enormous boulder a full 170 feet (50 meters) in size sits on the large crater's floor. Other key features of the surface are shallow subsurface layering exposed near the tops of crater walls, and shallow grooves crossing the surface and cutting the crater's rim.

Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR was the first spacecraft launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary missions. See the NEAR web page at http://near.jhuapl.edu/ for more details.