SNAPSHOTS of Eros continue to baffle astronomers months after a spacecraft
crash-landed on the rocky asteroid. The latest surprise is curious “ponds” of
dust on the asteroid’s surface.
NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft sent back close-up images of
Eros just before crashing into it in February
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 17 February, p 13).
They revealed a world strewn with boulders the size of large
buildings. These were probably created when a collision with another asteroid
punched a huge crater in Eros’s side, says Joseph Veverka of Cornell University
in New York.
But the images also show smooth “ponds” of…
