NEAR image of the day for 2000 Aug 09

Up Against the Wall

The array of features inside Eros' saddle - the large depression that dominates the asteroid's eastern hemisphere - illustrate the processes that modify the landscape on a tiny planetary body. This NEAR Shoemaker picture, taken August 4, 2000, from an orbital altitude of 52 kilometers (33 miles), is stark for its lack of crisp detail. Here the far wall of the saddle meets the floor. On the wall, craters are flat-floored and degraded, and the slope is marked by dark streaks. Craters and other features on the floor have been so thoroughly erased that the floor is almost bland. The whole scene is about 1.2 kilometers (0.8 miles) across.

(Image 0140768216)

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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.

Feedback to Scott Murchie. Scott.Murchie@jhuapl.edu.