But, while impressive, these satellites and others like them form a relatively small fraction of all Saturnian moons. Meantime, the composite Infrared Spectrometer will map areas on the moon with unusual thermal anomalies while the Cosmic Dust Analyzer will continue its search for particles emitted by Dion.
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Saturn’s moon Dione was discovered by Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1684, and was first imaged up close by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1980. Cassini’s flyby is scheduled for approximately 2:33 PM Eastern today, however it will take a few days for the images it captures to reach Earth. Targeted encounters require a burn to get the spacecraft in just the right position to set up a flyby.
During the flyby, Cassini’s cameras and spectrometers will get a high-resolution peek at Dione’s north pole at a resolution of only a few feet.
Cassini revealed them as bright icy cliffs.
Cassini’s closest-ever flyby of Dione was in December 2011, at a distance of 60 miles (100 kilometers).
Bonnie Buratti is a Cassini science team member at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The study now examines that “Dione has been an enigma, giving hints of active geologic processes, including a transient atmosphere and evidence of ice volcanoes”. Now mission scientists are excited for the mission’s fifth pass, as it’s their last opportunity to unravel Dione’s mysteries.
Cassini, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, is now completing a series of final close moon flybys, after which time it will leave Saturn’s equatorial plane to begin a year-long setup of its final year of operation.
“But we’ve never found the smoking gun”, she said in a NASA statement.
The probe, launched in 1997, passed by Jupiter before settling into orbit around Saturn in 2004. For its grand finale, Cassini will repeatedly dive through the space between Saturn and its rings.
“This will be our last chance to see Dione up close for many years to come”, said Scott Edington, one of the researchers, in a news release.
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Back home, scientists are hoping that data and images obtained this time in combination with earlier flybys will provide answers to the question whether any ongoing geologic activity is present on the moon similar to its sister moon the geyser spotting Enceladus.
