Up and Down

Asteroid Eros is a billion times smaller than the Earth, in terms of mass, and so its gravitational attraction is accordingly smaller. The pull is enough, though, to have caused fellow travelers in the asteroid belt to swerve if their pathways have come close, and sometimes to crash to the surface, making craters and also the dust that covers the surface. Gravity’s influence may be relatively small here, but it reaches out all the same from the asteroid’s surface into the surrounding void.