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At 20:05 GMT on Monday, NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft
crashed onto the rocky surface of asteroid 433 Eros—and lived to tell the
tale. In a grand finale before it ran out of fuel, researchers decided to let it
down gently onto the 33-kilometre-long rock, taking pictures all the way down
(NewScientist, 10 February, p 12).
They gave it a 1 in 100 chance of
surviving. “When the word came down that…it was still talking to us, it
was the thrill of my life,” says Andrew Cheng of Johns Hopkins University. The
close-up pictures explained why Eros seemed to have no small craters: they were
filled with fine soil.