Planets
433 Eros
[Mar 31, 2007] 433 Eros is an S-type asteroid orbiting the Sun mostly between the orbits of Earth and Mars.
orbit: 172,800,000 km from the Sun (average) size: 33x13x13 km
Eros was the Greek god of love and desire. At a press conference on February 17, 2000, mission scientists for the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission exuded the air of kids in a candy shop as they discussed the latest results from asteroid Eros. After less than a week in orbit, NEAR has already returned dazzling pictures that have surprised and delighted researchers. "At first I was stunned speechless by the beauty of this asteroidal landscape," said Mark Robinson, a member of the NEAR imaging team from Northwestern University. "Once I got over that, the geology took over." The first images from NEAR showed that Eros has an ancient surface covered with craters, grooves, layers, house-sized boulders and other complex features. "This is not just another rock floating out in space," continued Robinson. "There's a lot of neat geology going on." "There are tantalizing hints that the asteroid has a layered structure, like a sheet of plywood." said Andrew Cheng, of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, who serves as the NEAR mission's lead scientist.