Eros discovered
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031027
On this day in 1898, Gustav Witt in Berlin and Auguste Charlois in Nice independently discovered the first near-Earth asteroid, Eros. The asteroid is 34 km long. At 2.67 g/cm3, its density is about the same as Earth’s crust. That similarity could eventually prove to be commercially significant. Measurements of Eros made in 1998 by NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker space probe suggest that the asteroid could contain teragrams of aluminum, platinum and other valuable elements. Dynamical integrations suggest that Eros is a potential Earth impactor. There is a roughly 50% chance of the asteroid’s Mars-crossing orbit shifting to an Earth-crossing orbit within a span of 0.1 billion to 1 billion years.
Date in History: 13 August 1898
