Asteroid Eros. Photo: JHU/APL

NEAR Shoemaker returns images that reveal not only what makes Eros distinctive, but also what it shares with other asteroids.

This image, taken April 8, 2000, from an orbital height of 210 kilometers (131 miles), shows several of the linear troughs or "grooves" that mark the asteroid's surface. The largest one in this image, just to the right of the shadowed crater in the lower central part of the frame, is nearly 200 meters (656 feet) across. Grooves are also found on other asteroids and small asteroid-like moons, especially the Martian moon Phobos. They are thought to form when regolith -- the loose surface material thrown out of impact craters -- drains into subsurface cracks.

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.