From a delicate [
http://near.jhuapl.…000505.html ] orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft's camera has now imaged the entire surface of the small [
http://pdssbn.astro…] oddly-shaped [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] world at least once. Recorded on July 7th from a distance of 50 kilometers, this dramatic view [
http://near.jhuapl.…] is about 1.8 kilometers across. It shows the walls and rims of two large overlapping impact [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] craters on the horizon. Massive boulders which may be debris from the impacts are perched along the crater edges. The prominent boulder [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] on the horizon near picture center is about 40 meters long. In fact, the NEAR mission to Eros [
http://www.boulder.…] has shown that along with craters and boulders, grooves and ridges are also [
http://www.msss.com…index.html ] common on the asteroid's [
http://nssdc.gsfc.n…asteroidpage.html ] surface. While the craters are clearly of impact origin, puzzles about [
http://near.jhuapl.…00jul19.html ] the other surface features still remain. On July 13, controllers fired the spacecraft thrusters and moved NEAR Shoemaker [
http://near.jhuapl.…] to an even closer [
http://huey.jpl.nas…] 35 kilometer orbit to enable higher resolution surface studies.
Explanation
From a delicate [
http://near.jhuapl.…000505.html ] orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft's camera has now imaged the entire surface of the small [
http://pdssbn.astro…] oddly-shaped [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] world at least once. Recorded on July 7th from a distance of 50 kilometers, this dramatic view [
http://near.jhuapl.…] is about 1.8 kilometers across. It shows the walls and rims of two large overlapping impact [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] craters on the horizon. Massive boulders which may be debris from the impacts are perched along the crater edges. The prominent boulder [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] on the horizon near picture center is about 40 meters long. In fact, the NEAR mission to Eros [
http://www.boulder.…] has shown that along with craters and boulders, grooves and ridges are also [
http://www.msss.com…index.html ] common on the asteroid's [
http://nssdc.gsfc.n…asteroidpage.html ] surface. While the craters are clearly of impact origin, puzzles about [
http://near.jhuapl.…00jul19.html ] the other surface features still remain. On July 13, controllers fired the spacecraft thrusters and moved NEAR Shoemaker [
http://near.jhuapl.…] to an even closer [
http://huey.jpl.nas…] 35 kilometer orbit to enable higher resolution surface studies.
Explanation
