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PIA03129: Mysterious Surface Details
This image of asteroid Eros, taken by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker on Dec. 18, 2000, shows part of the asteroid's surface, like many others, appears vaguely 'sculptured' due to its low, elongated ridges and depressions with seemingly consistent orientations.
 Target Name:  Eros
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  NEAR Shoemaker 
 Spacecraft:  NEAR Shoemaker
 Instrument:  Multi-Spectral Imager 
 Product Size:  392 x 492 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Johns Hopkins University/APL 
 Addition Date:  2001-02-17 
 Primary Data Set:  NEAR Home Page 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA03129.tif (155.9 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA03129.jpg (31.18 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

NEAR Shoemaker photographed this area of Eros on December 18, 2000, from an orbital altitude of 33 kilometers (21 miles). This part of the asteroid's surface, like many others, appears vaguely "sculptured" due to its low, elongated ridges and depressions with seemingly consistent orientations. Some of the low spots also contain accumulations of smooth, pond-like materials. Neither the surface sculpturing nor the pond-like materials are well understood, and both will be investigated in detail using even higher-resolution images from NEAR Shoemaker's low passes over Eros in early 2001. The whole scene is about 1 kilometer (0.6 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.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/JHUAPL

Image Addition Date:
2001-02-17