Saturn's Moon Helene | NASA Cassini Mission

Saturn's Moon Helene | NASA Cassini Mission

Although its colors may be subtle, Saturn's moon Helene is an enigma in any light. The moon was imaged in unprecedented detail in 2012 as the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn swooped to within a single Earth diameter of the diminutive moon. Although conventional craters and hills appear, the above image also shows terrain that appears unusually smooth and streaked. Planetary astronomers are inspecting these detailed images of Helene to glean clues about the origin and evolution of the 30-km across floating iceberg. Helene is also unusual because it circles Saturn just ahead of the large moon Dione, making it one of only four known Saturnian moons to occupy a gravitational well known as a stable Lagrange point. Saturn has 83 moons. Sixty-three moons are confirmed and named, and another 20 moons are awaiting confirmation of discovery and official naming by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The Cassini-Huygens mission was a cooperative project of NASA, European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the U.S. and several European countries.

Learn about Saturn and its moons here:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/saturn/overview/

More information about the Cassini Mission (1997-2017):

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/cassini

Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute (SSI)

Processing: Daniel Macháček

Image Date: 2012

Release Date: April 30, 2023

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