# Eros

*In the Solar System*

A near-Earth asteroid the shape of a peanut, here because NEAR Shoemaker orbited it for a year and then, in February 2001, landed on it - the first spacecraft to orbit a small body and the first to touch one, on a mission that had no landing legs and was never designed to. Its orbit crosses Mars's and comes inside 22 million km of ours, which is what made it reachable and what makes it worth watching.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Radius | 8 km |
| Around the equator | 53 km |
| From the Sun | 244,616,916 km (+354,013 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 278,583,851 km (+1,501,481 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 15 min |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=eros
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/eros/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt