NEAR image of the day for 2000 May 23
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Craterscape The inside of Eros' largest crater, which dominates one side of the asteroid, was captured in this NEAR Shoemaker image taken May 19, 2000, from an orbital altitude of 50 kilometers (31 miles). The section shown is about one quarter of the whole crater and is approximately 1.4 kilometers (0.8 miles) across. A cluster of large boulders sits at the bottom of the pit, and features as small as 4 meters (13 feet) across can be distinguished. More boulders dot the walls, which are also mottled by variations in the reflectivity of the surface layer of rock and soil, known as "regolith."
(Image 0134136322)
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Feedback to Scott Murchie. Scott.Murchie@jhuapl.edu.
Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR-Shoemaker was the first spacecraft launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary missions.
See the NEAR web site for more details.