Eros is believed to have been formed from the wreckage of a collision with a larger body. Its composition appears to be similar to the stony meteorites that frequently fall to Earth.
That means Eros is a gold mine in space, as well as a platinum mine, a zinc mine and many more minerals besides.
If Eros is typical of stony meteorites, then it contains about 3% metal. With the known abundance's of metals in meteorites, even a very cautious estimate suggests 20,000 million tons of aluminium along with similar amounts of gold, platinum and other rarer metals.
In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.
That is just in one asteroid and not a very large one at that. There are thousands of asteroids out there.
BBC News - Thursday, July 22, 1999 Published at 17:54 GMT 18:54 UK
