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A Hint of Structure

Feb. 17, 2001
This image of asteroid Eros, taken by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker on Sept. 5, 2000, shows knobs sticking out of the surface near the top of the image surround a boulder-strewn area, robably remnants of ancient impact craters.

This is a mosaic of four images taken by NEAR Shoemaker on September 5, 2000, from about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Eros. The knobs sticking out of the surface near the top of the image surround a boulder-strewn area (featured as the Image of the Day for April 4, 2000) and are probably remnants of ancient impact craters. The very faint grooves that run diagonally across the surface in this image may have formed during a collision between the asteroid and a smaller body.

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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