Near Shoemaker is the first of the Discovery series of spacecraft - built as part of the American space agency's (Nasa) " faster, better, cheaper " programme.
Near-Shoemaker began its life as simply Near: Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.
NEAR-Shoemaker was then able to produce a "fingerprint" of the asteroid's chemical makeup, mission scientists said.
It was renamed Near-Shoemaker in 2000 after geologist Gene Shoemaker , who died in a car accident in 1997.
The gravity on Eros is very weak , but was still strong enough to hold Near-Shoemaker in orbit for a year.
Without such a solar explosion, NEAR-Shoemaker would likely have had to pass several times over the same spot to record as much data.
NEAR-Shoemaker began its yearlong orbit around Eros on February 14 and currently circles the asteroid from a distance of 31 miles (50 km).
Signals from Near-Shoemaker take around 15 minutes to reach Earth .
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.
The Mars Global Surveyor, which mapped the Red Planet from the late 90s, and the Near-Shoemaker probe, which visited an Asteroid Eros in 2003, both carried the Westcott technology.
For the second, NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) Shoemaker trained its lens on the saddle, a part of Eros that exhibits few impact craters.
While James was deciding to leave Microsoft he spent three months meeting with as many do-gooders as he could find near Seattle, including Paul Shoemaker of Social Venture Partners, a group that connects Seattle-area donors with local charities.
The leather remains also point to a shoemaker once being based near the site.
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