Asteroid
An elongated near-Earth asteroid, the first ever to be orbited and landed on by a spacecraft.
| Type | Asteroid |
|---|---|
| Distance from the Sun | 1.46 AU |
| Diameter | 17 km |
| Mass | 6.69 × 10¹⁵ kg |
| Temperature | -46°C |
| Orbital period | 643 days |
| Rotation period | 5.27 hours |
| Apparent magnitude | 7 |
| Redshift | 0 |
| Discovered | 1898 |
Asteroids are rocky leftovers from the solar system's formation, most of them confined to the belt between Mars and Jupiter where Jupiter's gravity kept them from ever assembling into a planet.
At 17 km across, Eros is 0.1 percent of the diameter of Earth.
Its mass is less than a thousandth of the mass of Earth.
It keeps an average distance of 1.46 AU from the Sun, so sunlight takes 12 minutes to reach it.
A single orbit takes 1.8 years.
An average temperature of 227 K works out at -46 degrees Celsius, colder than the 15 degrees Earth averages.
It has been on record since 1898.
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