See the online press release for the other images and additional details. This is a composite of 16 15-second images. Eugenia itself is overexposed. Courtesy William J. Merline. Eugenia itself is about 215 km in diameter.
Flight controllers presume the spacecraft broke apart in the atmosphere.
Click on image for larger view. NASA announced today the likely reason the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost. On September 23rd, the spacecraft apparently passed only 60 km from the Martian surface, rather than the planned close approach of 140 to 150 km. Engineers consider 85 km the minimum safe altitude for a flyby. A preliminary investigation revealed that a mismatch of figures occurred because one team of engineers had used English units of measure while another used metric.