433 Eros
 This picture of Eros shows the view looking from one end of the asteroid across the gouge on its underside and toward the opposite end | |
|---|---|
| Orbital characteristics | |
| Orbit type | Near-Earth |
| Semimajor axis | AU |
| Eccentricity | 0.22290 |
| Orbital period | 1.76 y |
| Inclination | 10.82948° |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Diameter | km |
| Mass | 15 kilogram>kg |
| Density | 2.4 g/cm³ |
| Rotation period | 5 h 16 m |
| Spectral class | S |
| Albedo | 0.16 |
| History | |
| Discoverer | Gustav Witt, 1898 |
The asteroid 433 Eros was named after the Greek god of love Eros. It is an S-type asteroid approximately 13 × 13 × 33 km in size, the second-largest near-Earth asteroid.
It was visited by the NEAR Shoemaker probe, which first orbited it taking extensive photographs of its surface and then on February 12th 2001 at the end of its mission was landed on the asteroid's surface using only its maneuvering jets.
Depending on where they stood on Eros, a person who weighed 200 pounds (90 kg) on Earth would weigh about two ounces (60g) on the asteroid. A rock tossed from the asteroid's surface at 22 mph (35 km/h) could escape into space. A person with a 36 inch (0.9 m) vertical leap could jump about a mile (1.6 km) on Eros and risk ending up in orbit.
Surface gravity depends on the distance from a spot on the surface to the center of a body's mass. The surface gravity on Eros varies a lot, since it is not a sphere but an elongated peanut-shaped (or potato-shaped, or shoe-shaped) object. The daytime temperature on Eros at about 100 °C and nighttime measurements at -150 °C. Eros's density is 2,400 kg/m3, about the same as the density of Earth's crust. It rotates once every 5.27 hours.
NEAR scientists have found that most of the larger rocks strewn across Eros were ejected from a single crater in a meteorite collision perhaps a billion years ago.
See also: List of geological features on 433 Eros