Despite its name, Eros is no more romantic than any other huge rock. It measures about 33km (21 miles) long and 13km wide, and is pockmarked with craters from the collisions it has suffered during its 4,5 billion years of existence. It is also several hundred million kilometres from earth, so discovering even this basic information cost $223m and took four years. That, however, is a comparatively small price as space missions go. The spacecraft that made the journey, called NEAR-Shoemaker (the "near" is short for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous; the "Shoemaker" was added later in tribute to a dead astronomer), was the first probe to be launched as part of NASA'S "Discovery" programme. This programme is supposed to epitomise the agency's then-new mantra of "faster, better, cheaper".
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