NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Captures Final Images of Saturn Moon Dione

As per reports, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft pulled off a final flyby and sent high-resolution images back to Earth. The spacecraft, which has been exploring Saturn and its moons since 2004, made its closest-ever Dione flyby in December. 2011 when it passed within 60 miles of the moon’s surface.

Saturn’s moon Dione hangs in front of Saturn’s rings in this view. Territory seen here is just east of a crater named Butes, near an unnamed tectonic structure around 65 degrees north latitude, 25 degrees west longitude.

In a statement, Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini’s imaging team said “I am moved, as I know everyone else is, looking at these exquisite images of Dione’s surface and crescent, and knowing that they are the last we will see of this far-off world for a very long time to come”. “Right down to the last, Cassini has faithfully delivered another extraordinary set of riches”.

Crater-pocked Dione was in spotlight this week; it is one among the 50 known moons of Saturn. This will make three approaches to the moon Enceladus later this year, passing as close as 30 miles from the geologically active moon’s surface on October 28. The icy landscape reflects both large and small impacts preserved on it.

Scientists hope to learn more about Dione’s interior structure and geologic processes by studying the images, and data gathered using the magnetosphere, and plasma and gravity science instruments, aboard the space probe.

As such, its camera was not in control of where the craft’s direction was pointed which means there was no certainty that it could capture Dione clearly. Since then, astronomers have been able to get a glimpse at the ringed planet’s diverse moons, the largest collection orbiting any planet in our solar system. Because of the added light source, the images provided more detail in the moon’s shadows.

NASA on Thursday released some of the highest-resolution photographs ever captured of Saturn’s moon Dione. The image was acquired in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera during a close flyby of the icy moon on August 17, 2015. For its final mission in 2017, Cassini is going to take repeated plunges in space between Saturn and its rings.