Cassini Captures New Images of Icy Moon

New raw, unprocessed images of Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea, were taken on March 10, 2012, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This was a relatively distant flyby with a close-approach distance of 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers), well suited for global geologic mapping


NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. All of Cassini's raw images can be seen at http://saturn. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. nasa. JPL is a division of Caltech. gov and http://www. nasa. jpl. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn. nasa. The imaging operations team is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The observations included the large Mamaldi (300 miles, or 480 kilometers, across) and Tirawa (220 miles, or 360 kilometers, across) impact basins and the 29-miles (47-kilometers) ray crater Inktomi, one of the youngest surface features on Rhea (about 950 miles, or 1,530 kilometers, across). gov/cassini jpl. During the flyby, Cassini captured these distinctive views of the moon's cratered surface, creating a 30-frame mosaic of Rhea's leading hemisphere and the side of the moon that faces away from Saturn. gov/photos/raw/.