Cassini’s Zips Past the Death Star
The great eye of Mimas. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI Click to enlarge
The great eye of Saturn’s moon Mimas (MY-muss), a 130-kilometer-wide (80-mile) impact crater called Herschel, stares out from the battered moon in this raw image taken by the Cassini spacecraft during a flyby on Aug. 2.
The Herschel crater is the moon’s most prominent feature, and the impact that formed it probably nearly destroyed Mimas. Cassini flew by Mimas at 62,700 kilometers (38,800 miles) above the moons surface, bringing it closer to the little moon than ever before.
Original Source: NASA/JPL/SSI News Release
Recent Posts
Psyche is Still Sending Data Home at Broadband Speeds
When I heard about this I felt an amused twinge of envy. Over the last…
Uh oh. Hubble's Having Gyro Problems Again
The Hubble Space Telescope has gone through its share of gyroscopes in its 34-year history…
Astronomers Will Get Gravitational Wave Alerts Within 30 Seconds
Any event in the cosmos generates gravitational waves, the bigger the event, the more disturbance.…
Next Generation Ion Engines Will Be Extremely Powerful
During the Space Race, scientists in both the United States and the Soviet Union investigated…
Neutron Stars Could be Capturing Primordial Black Holes
The Milky Way has a missing pulsar problem in its core. Astronomers have tried to…
Japan’s Lunar Lander Survives its Third Lunar Night
Space travel and exploration was never going to be easy. Failures are sadly all too…