Pictures taken with Near's Multispectral Imager offer several clues about Eros's origin, age and geography.

BBC: Eros is 'no ordinary rock'

Multispectral imaging works by scanning objects at a series of specific frequencies both within and beyond the visible spectrum.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

Besides looking at ancient scrolls, the multispectral scanner can compare things like bank notes and passports with reference documents of known provenance.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

During this ascent, the multispectral imager will continue to take images of Eros that will be compiled into a complete map of the asteroid.

BBC: Probe nears its rocky target

The team at Rochester, which is led by Roger Easton, is concentrating on so-called multispectral analysis, borrowing techniques that were developed for analysing satellite images of the earth.

ECONOMIST: The Archimedes palimpsest

Over the past decade Dr Obbink, Dr Kovalchuk and their team have both improved the hardware of multispectral analysis (which was originally developed by America's space agency, NASA), and written more sophisticated algorithms to analyse what is seen.

ECONOMIST: Monitor