To NEAR Shoemaker’s digital camera it was merely another sequence of images. But the photos of Eros’ south pole snapped in the early hours of June 27 will give NEAR team members the last pieces of a global puzzle, covering the only ground on Eros they haven’t seen since the satellite began orbiting the asteroid on Feb. 14.
“We’re filling in the last little gaps,” says Louise Prockter, a member of the NEAR imaging team at the Applied Physics Laboratory. “Once we process those images, we will have everything we need for a global mosaic of Eros.”
It’s autumn in the asteroid’s northern hemisphere, which means the sun is illuminating the southern regions that were shadowed through the first months of NEAR Shoemaker’s orbit. The camera couldn’t “see” the areas earlier because it needs reflected light from the surface, so most of the imaging covered the northern sections.
Now that it has a overall view of Eros, the NEAR team can start to train the camera on specific details among the asteroid’s craters, ridges, grooves, boulders and troughs. “Every day we see new structures,” Prockter says. “We have seen an incredible variety of amazing features, and we are recognizing things we’ve seen on other terrestrial planets and bodies. “
The NEAR team gets its closest look yet at those features on July 14, when the spacecraft begins a 10-day, nearly circular orbit just 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the asteroid’s surface. NEAR Shoemaker descends from its current 31-mile (50-kilometer) vantage on July 7. The spacecraft is 74 million miles (118 million kilometers) from Earth, circling Eros at just under 7 miles an hour.
