Eros Take a closer look at the mysterious asteroid by viewing the film fromthe NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft of Asteroid 433 Eros from orbit. That jump in resolution really brings things into focus, both literally and figuratively. Seventy-four of those images taken at intervals ranging from 75 to 25 seconds were then stitched together to make the film. Battered during a lifetime measured in the billions of years, Eros appears soft and muted in the images, its edges worn.
Dust fills crater bottoms and piles up high around rocks the size of small office buildings.
Jagged boulders lie nearby others that are smooth, pointing to a complex evolutionary history dominated by the impact of objects on the asteroid, and how the resulting ejecta responded to the low-gravity environment. The planetary pan is but the latest but by far the highest resolution yet of a handful of films released during the course of the mission. There is an amazing number and variety of boulders, some of which seem to have a layered structure. We also see the same global fabric of ridges and grooves that we saw from higher altitudes, and from this altitude we can discern finer details. More images and clips will be released, scientists said, in conjunction with a forthcoming paper in the journal Science .