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Southwest of the Big Crater (Mosaic)

July 6, 2000
This image of asteroid Eros, taken by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker on May 14, 2000, shows bright patches at upper right that are relatively freshly exposed regolith on the inside wall of the crater.

This mosaic of eight images -- which NEAR Shoemaker snapped on May 14, 2000, from an altitude of 50 kilometers (31 miles) -- covers the region southwest of Eros' large, 5.3-kilometer (3.3-mile) diameter crater. The bright patches at upper right are relatively freshly exposed regolith on the inside wall of the crater. The two large, subdued craters in the center of the mosaic are each about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide. The boulder on the floor of the crater to the left is one of the larger rocks on Eros, more than 90 meters (295 feet) across. The whole scene is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across.

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.

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