Flying Over Asteroid Eros

Explanation: What would it look like to fly over an asteroid? Spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker in orbit around asteroid 433 Eros found out earlier this month when it recorded its first fly-over sequence. The saddle region of the Sun-orbiting space-mountain appears to zip past the camera in this condensed hour-long time-lapse sequence . The spacecraft was orbiting about 200 kilometers above the asteroid . Movies such as this are scientifically useful for discerning between regions that are naturally dark and regions that have their brightness dominated by shadows. The week before, a bright X-ray burst from the Sun allowed NEAR's X-ray spectrometer to detect the presence of several elements on Eros' surface by their X-ray fluorescent signatures.