Eros

 

433 Eros is one of the largest and best-observed near-Earth asteroids. Discovered independently by Gustav Witt (Germany) and August H.P. Charlois (France) in 1898, Eros accounts for nearly half the volume of all near-Earth asteroids. The potato-shaped space rock's dimensions of 21 miles (33 kilometers) long, 8 miles (13 kilometers) wide and 8 miles thick make it about twice the size of Manhattan. Eros orbits the Sun with a perihelion of 1.13 Astronomical Units (169,045,593 kilometers) and an aphelion of 1.78 AU (266,284,209 kilometers), and it rotates once every 5 hours and 16 minutes. Even though the gravity on Eros is enormous compared to the other modeled asteroids, it is still very weak compared to Earth. Depending on where they stood, a 200-pound person on Earth would weigh only about 2 ounces on Eros! A rock thrown from the asteroid's surface at 22 miles an hour (10 meters per second) would escape into space.