NASA releases stunning images of Saturn’s moon Dione

After the August 17 flyby, Cassini reached within 295 miles of the moon, close enough to take images of craters, chasms and other surface features of the moon.

While Cassini prepares for its grand finale in 2017, it has only a few more flybys of Saturn’s large moons on its agenda.

Cassini’s Final Breathtaking Close Views of Dione This view of Dione from Cassini includes the mission’s highest-resolution view of the icy moon’s surface as an inset at center left. It is still slated to visit Enceladus, Saturn’s moon that is said to harbor water, three more times before the year ends.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft gazes out upon a rolling, cratered landscape in this oblique view of Saturn’s moon Dione.

Looking like artwork from “Interstellar”, Cassini’s photos paint a humbling picture about the planets we so conventionally think about in school textbooks. It made its closest flyby around Dione in December 2011 at a distance of 60 miles. “We were able to make use of reflected sunlight from Saturn as an additional light source, which revealed details in the shadows of some of the images”.

Some parts of Dione’s surface are covered by linear features, called chasmata, which provide dramatic contrast to the round impact craters that typically cover moons. The moon circles Saturn just under 3 Earth days. “The fifth flyby of Dione (was) our last chance”, said Bonnie Buratti, a Cassini science team member at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California told Space Flight Now.

As per the reports, now, Cassini is done with concentrating on Dione, and will be flying past the moon Encedalus.

After this flyby, Cassini will not anymore be making any close approaches to Dione.

And, before its fatal plunge through the gas giant’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will repeatedly dive through the space between Saturn and its rings, providing scientists best-ever views of the big structures.

Cassini will make only a handful of close flybys around Saturn’s large, icy moons this year.

Over the next few months, astronomers with the Cassini mission will study data from this gravity science experiment along with magnetosphere and plasma science instruments to search for clues about Dione’s interior structure and the processes affecting its surface.