NEAR's Landing on Eros: Clues to Geological Processes on Small Asteroids

The NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft was designed to provide the first comprehensive global characterization of an asteroid. Following the successful completion of a year-long orbital investigation of S-type asteroid 433 Eros, an irregularly shaped body with approximate dimensions of 34 x 13 x 13 km, it was decided to terminate the mission by a controlled descent to the surface. The principal goal of this maneuver was to provide extremely high resolution images during the descent. Here we report insights about geological processes on Eros derived from 70 images obtained during the successful landing on February 12, 2001. The closest image, obtained from an altitude of 129 meters, shows the interior of a 100 meter crater at 1 centimeter resolution and reveals unexpected depositional and erosional features in the regolith of Eros.