If Eros is a chip off a more massive world, how big was that parent body?
"All we can say is that it was bigger, much bigger than present-day Eros. But how much bigger? I doubt that we'll have a good estimate of that," Cheng said.
The name game
While debates rage about Eros' past and present, one issue has cropped up that's the most contentious of all: naming features on the asteroid.
NEAR's science team has voted on names for craters, ridges and other features. "We've only managed to agree on a couple dozen names. Undoubtedly, we're going to need more names as time goes on," Cheng said.
"For instance, we don't have to use the name "Saddle" anymore. We have a real name for it," Cheng said. What names have been tagged to what landforms on Eros are soon to be announced. Details are still hush-hush, he said.
Meanwhile, ground controllers are ready to send NEAR-Shoemaker one step closer to Eros. Commands are to be sent July 7 to the probe, moving it from its current 31-mile (50-kilometer) vantage point down to just 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the asteroid's surface.
More maneuvers around Eros are planned. The probe will later be put into a high altitude over Eros, as well as commanded to take a set of low-altitude flybys of the asteroid in October.
The NEAR-Shoemaker mission is to end mid February 2001.
"If all goes well with the camera, by the end of the mission we will have taken something like 125,000 images. That's a lot of data, and we'll have a lot to do. We're going to be busy," said Prockter.
advertisement
