This view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn’s icy moon Dione, with giant Saturn and its rings in the background, just prior to the mission’s final close approach to the moon on August 17, 2015.
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Crater-pocked Dione was in spotlight this week; it is one among the 50 known moons of Saturn.
This view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows terrain on Saturn’s moon Dione that is entirely lit by reflected light from Saturn, called Saturnshine.
Cassini, the spacecraft that was launched in 1997 to study Saturn, has photographed dazzling images from Saturn’s moon Dione.
Scientists are eager to examine imagery taken of Saturn’s mysterious moon and hope to answer questions about Dione’s surface and its ice volcanos. It was an added advantage that the spacecraft captured detailed final images. The icy landscape reflects both large and small impacts preserved on it.
The closest flyby that Cassini made of Dione was in 2011 when it flew over the surface at a distance of 60 miles. “The fifth flyby of Dione (was) our last chance”, said Bonnie Buratti, a Cassini science team member at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California told Space Flight Now. Since then, astronomers have been able to get a glimpse at the ringed planet’s diverse moons, the largest collection orbiting any planet in our solar system. The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. This view shows the region as a contrast-enhanced image in which features in shadow are illuminated by reflected light from Saturn. Over the course of next few months, Cassini scientists will be studying data from the gravity science experiment and magnetosphere and plasma science instruments to look for clues about Dione’s interior structure and processes affecting its surface.
After this flyby, Cassini will not anymore be making any close approaches to Dione.
That close pass with the geologically active moon should allow Cassini to take samples from the plumes of “icy spray” Enceladus shoots into space, NASA said.
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Cassini’s mission will conclude in 2017, sending itself into Saturn’s atmosphere where it will be destroyed.
