15 years of the first contact with the vehicle earth asteroid

February 14, 2000 the spacecraft «NEAR Shoemaker» entered the orbit of the asteroid Eros, and a year later took on its surface and another two weeks transmit data back to Earth. Along the way, which took several years, «NEAR Shoemaker» made 500 images of asteroid Mathilde and photographed the Earth from Antarctica.





The device launched February 17, 1996 from Cape Canaveral on the launch vehicle "Delta-2". 26 and 27 June 1997 the unit transferred to Earth five hundred images of the asteroid Mathilde. This photograph was taken from a distance of 1,800 km from the asteroid, the sunlight falls on it at the top right. Image scale - 230 meters per pixel. The asteroid is very dark, it reflects only 4% of the surface, but the unit was able to take a picture of it with a multispectral camera.



This image Matilda composed of four photos taken from a distance of 2400 kilometers. We can see the size of the 59 to 47 kilometers.



Here we see three asteroid in the same scale - Mathilde, Gaspra (named in honor of the urban settlement in Crimea, where many years spent Leo Tolstoy) and Ida

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The asteroid at a distance of 1,200 km. At least five Matilda craters are greater than 20 km in diameter, they cover about 60% of the surface.



Matilda images from two angles.



After the flyby of the asteroid Mathilde spacecraft returned to earth to change the trajectory, which made this photo of the planet from the Antarctic.



The last time the machine tried syazatsya in December 2002. On the surface of the asteroid «NEAR Shoemaker» transmit data within two weeks.









Source: geektimes.ru/post/271018/