Nearer To Asteroid Eros

As the robot spacecraft NEAR lowers itself toward asteroid 433 Eros , more surface details are becoming visible. Last week's maneuvers brought NEAR to within 204 kilometers of the floating mountain's surface . With increased resolution, NEAR's camera then documented Eros' unusual shape , craters large and small, boulders , and mysterious grooves similar to asteroid Gaspra and Martian moon Phobos . If you could stand on Eros , you would still be too small to be visible on this recent image , which shows features as small as 20 meters across. However, you would feel gravity only 1/1000 that on Earth , so that you could easily jump over even this large 5 kilometer wide crater.