Cassini spacecraft snaps new photos of Saturn’s weirdest moon

By Miriam Kramer From Mashable

This might just be the weirdest moon in the solar system.

The Cassini spacecraft — which is winding down its time exploring Saturn and its many moons — just took its last photos of the strange moon Hyperion. Up close the moon looks like a potato-shaped piece of rock with millions of holes punched out of it.

Hyperion is so pock-marked because its low-density surface has been impacted by space debris many times through the course of its life. Cassini scientists think that Hyperion is actually composed of a material that is half as dense as water.

“Its low density indicates Hyperion is quite porous, with weak surface gravity,” NASA said in a statement on June 2. “These characteristics mean impactors tend to compress the surface, rather than excavating it, and most material that is blown off the surface never returns.”

The new Cassini images show Hyperion as it appeared during a May 31 flyby, when the spacecraft was about 21,000 miles (34,000 kilometers) from the moon’s surface.

Cassini made an even closer pass with Hyperion in 2005. That flyby brought the probe about 314 miles (505 km) from the moon.

Hyperion might actually be a piece of leftover material from a cosmic collision that broke apart a larger object, NASA said.

Cassini launched to space in 1997 and made it to Saturn in 2004. Cassini’s mission is set to come to an end in 2017 once it runs out of fuel, but the probe still has plenty of work to do before then. The spacecraft is going to thread itself between Saturn and its distinctive rings multiple times before its mission comes to an end.

IMAGE:
Hyperion-1 Saturn’s moon Hyperion seen by the Cassini spacecraft.
Hyperion in crescent Hyperion looks like a crescent in this Cassini image. IMAGE: NASA
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