Asteroid Eros. Photo: JHU/APL

Though NEAR Shoemaker returns images that reveal a wealth of detail about the landforms on Eros' surface, appreciating the scale of these features can be a little difficult without roads, buildings, trees or other familiar landmarks.

This image, taken May 4, 2000, from an orbital altitude of 50 kilometers (31 miles), shows a variety of small surface features. The whole scene is about 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) across. To better visualize the size of the features, a to-scale Empire State Building is inset at the bottom of the image. The shallow, linear troughs in the lower part of the photo (marked by arrows) are 60 meters (197 feet) across. The boulder on the floor of the large crater at right is 30 meters (98 feet) across, whereas the crater itself measures about 800 meters (2,625 feet) across.

Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR-Shoemaker was the first spacecraft launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary missions.