News Planetary Science

Cassini snaps icy moon Dione

By Ron Cowen

- More than 2 years ago

Like a wrinkled dowager, Saturn’s small moon Dione has a heavily cratered and fractured surface. The first close-up portrait of this moon, recorded by the Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 11 when it passed within

SCARFACE. Close-up portrait of Saturn’s moon Dione. Space Science Institute, JPL/NASA

500 kilometers, shows that Dione’s surface bears the scars of multiple generations of fractures that haven’t been erased by any relatively recent upheavals.