13th August 1898 The asteroid Eros is discovered by German astronomer Gustav Witt. With an approximate diameter of 16.8 kilometres and a rotation period of 5.27 hours it orbits in an eccentric orbit between Mars and Earth travelling mainly inside the orbit of Mars. Eros is famous as the first asteroid to be orbited by a spacecraft, and the first asteroid to have a spacecraft land on it when the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft made a soft landing on the asteroid’s surface in 2