This picture of Eros, taken from NEAR Shoemaker on June 20, 2000, shows a stunning aspect of the "bent" asteroid's peanut-like shape. The far side of the asteroid looms like an enormous wall beyond a near horizon in the foreground. The image was taken from an altitude of 51 kilometers (32 miles) and shows a region about 1.4 kilometers (0.9 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.