Yellow roses, signifying friendship more than eros, seemed right, given the complex potentials of the evening.
Eros was named by German astronomer Gustav Witt, who discovered the asteroid in 1898.
If Eros, too, is unexpectedly light, a lot of rethinking will have to be done.
Pictures taken with Near's Multispectral Imager offer several clues about Eros's origin, age and geography.
Near's encounter with Eros is its second chance to go into orbit around the rock.
One difference between Eros and ordinary meteorites, however, is that the asteroid is not magnetic.
The spacecraft has measured Eros at 21 miles long by 8 miles wide and 8 miles deep.
X-rays and gamma rays that Eros gives off in response to bombardment by solar and cosmic radiation.
It is possible that Near will be commanded to crash onto Eros when its mission is ended.
It was to have orbited Eros in January 1999, but a computer glitch ordered Near's rocket to misfire.
It affords Dr Cheng and his colleagues the chance to get an even closer view of Eros's craters.
In late August, the spacecraft will begin to climb from 50 to 500 km (31 to 311 miles) above Eros.
Shoemaker was studying asteroid impact craters in Australia and once said he would like to take a geologist's hammer to Eros.
The gravity on Eros is very weak , but was still strong enough to hold Near-Shoemaker in orbit for a year.
Eros, otherwise known as Asteroid 433, was chosen as a destination because it is relatively big and close to Earth .
The temperature on Eros is estimated to vary between 100 degrees Celsius during the day and 150 below zero during the night.
No one can estimate how much it would cost to burrow into the riches of Eros, or to bring those riches home.
It will put NEAR directly between the sun and Eros, affording a unique opportunity to map the asteroid's minerals under optimal lighting.
NEAR-Shoemaker began its yearlong orbit around Eros on February 14 and currently circles the asteroid from a distance of 31 miles (50 km).
The only experience in landing on asteroids comes from Nasa's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (Near) mission, which touched down on the asteroid Eros.
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On February 14th, St Valentine's day, one of its craft went into orbit around an asteroid called Eros amid much over-rehearsed, toe-curling humour.
Certain elements on the surface emitted X-rays when the sun zapped Eros with an intense burst of radiation for 30 minutes on May 4.
For the second, NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) Shoemaker trained its lens on the saddle, a part of Eros that exhibits few impact craters.
During this ascent, the multispectral imager will continue to take images of Eros that will be compiled into a complete map of the asteroid.
The Criterion - situated next to the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus - has been a West End fixture since it first opened in 1874.
Its trip to Eros was delayed by a year and 23 days in 1998 when controllers were unable to manoeuvre it into the correct orbit.
Andrew Cheng, project scientist for the Eros probe NEAR-Shoemaker, said the big question facing commercial space ventures remains what it will cost to get their equipment off Earth.
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Uniform grooves across its craters and ridges hint at a global network of underground layers, which Cheng says could indicate Eros was once part of a larger body.
"If more data confirm Eros is primordial, Eros will be a link between the chondrite meteorites found on Earth and the history of the solar system's formation, " McCoy said.
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