Since February 14, NASAs Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft has been orbiting 433 Eros .

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Shortly after it began circling Eros, the spacecraft was renamed NEAR Shoemaker, after the late space geologist, Gene Shoemaker.

Every bit of this chunk of space flotsam has fallen under NEAR Shoemakers array of instruments and sensors. Eros is photogenic, to say the least. Not a bad side to the giant shoe-looking world that flips heel over toe.

Scientists now have solid data on the oddly shaped space rock. Eros is surely a fractured chip off a larger body.

The huge hulk -- about the size of a small city -- is populated by grooves, ridges, steep cliffs, and covered by a deep layer of loose rocks and dust.

Heavily cratered Eros is down for the count. That is, scientists have tallied more than 100,000 craters wider than 50 feet (15.2 meters) and about 1 million house-sized or bigger boulders.

Month after month, NEAR Shoemaker has been romancing the stone. The rocks uniform density is about thesame as Earths crust . A global fabric of grooves and ridges suggests that Eros is a cracked, but solid rock, not a gravity-bound collection of rubble.

Confident controllers on Earth have been able to maneuver the car-sized NEAR Shoemaker to various altitudes as it swings round and round the rock of ages. In October, after more than eight months in orbit around asteroid Eros, the NEAR Shoemaker swooped down to within three miles (5.3 kilometers). A little tricky, but spectacular close-up imagery was obtained.

Starting in January 2001, a series of engine firings will enable the spacecraft nudge itself to progressively lower orbits and low flyovers of Eros. On February 12, NEAR Shoemaker is to make a "controlled descent" - space lingo for a landing.

If successful, high-resolution images from only 1,640 feet (500 meters) above the asteroids surface are to be sent back to Earth.

Now thats a close-up.

-- Leonard David, Senior Space Writer