On April 14, 2012, the Cassini space probe had another flyby at an altitude of 74 km (46 miles) over Saturn’s satellite Enceladus. The first one happened about three weeks ago.
Again, the Cassini spacecraft used its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) and its Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) to capture particles from the jets coming from the south pole of Enceladus to analyze the organic compounds contained in the water. Specifically, Cassini flew along Baghdad Sulcus, one of the fractures on the surface of this satellite, which have the appearance of parallel stripes like a tiger’s mantle.
During its flyby, the Cassini space probe also took new pictures of Enceladus: These are raw images, but the jets of water from the surface are clearly visible.
The next day, flying away from Enceladus, the Cassini spacecraft took more pictures of another satellite of Saturn, Tethys. In this case, it wasn’t exactly a close encounter because Tethys was over 9,000 km away (about 5,700 miles), much farther than the 1,500 km (930 miles) of distance Cassini reached in 2005, when it took the best pictures of this satellite.
[ad name=”GANAbeBooksTextBooks468″]
On that occasion, the Cassini space probe took photographs of the face of Tethys facing Saturn. This time, instead, it took some photographs at the best resolution of the face of Tethys away from Saturn.
It was therefore possible to take images of the crater called Odysseus, which has a diameter of more than 400 kilometers (more than 250 miles). Considering that Tethys has a diameter of approximately 1,060 km (660 miles), it’s a crater very large in absolute terms and enormous in relation to the size of this satellite.
Photographs of Tethys were already taken in the ’70s and ’80s by the space probes Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, but the ones taken by the Cassini spacecraft are the best. Putting together all the images, scientists can create a map of the surface of Tethys that includes terrain elevations.
Tethys is interesting because it’s made almost entirely of water ice with a small amount of rocky material. On the other hand, it’s been known for years that Saturn and its many moons are a source which seems inexhaustible of intriguing research.
