PIA03131: Degraded Craters


Degraded Craters

Caption:

NEAR Shoemaker captured this picture of two similarly sized craters in different states of preservation on January 1, 2001, from an orbital altitude of 35 kilometers (22 miles). The large "fresh" crater near the top of the frame exhibits a bowl shape with a relatively well-defined, sharp rim. The "degraded" one below it is puckered by smaller craters and probably partly buried by regolith, so the crisp detail visible in the top crater has been lost. The whole scene is about 0.9 kilometers (0.6 miles) across.

Background Info:

Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR was the first spacecraft launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary missions. See the NEAR web page at http://near.jhuapl.edu/ for more details.

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target 433 Eros
System Near Earth Objects
Target Type Asteroid
Mission NEAR Shoemaker
Instrument Host NEAR Shoemaker
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI)
Detector
Extra Keywords Crater, Grayscale
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2001-02-17
Date in Caption 2001-01-01
Image Credit NASA/JPL/JHUAPL
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03131
Identifier PIA03131