Wonderland
More glimpses from Cassini’s close buzz by Saturn’s moon Iapetus. These pictures come from the same set of observations seen in Monday’s entry, but their transmission was interrupted when a galactic cosmic ray struck Cassini’s circuitry, just as the download got underway. The robotic space farer went into a special mode for dealing with malfunctions, but normal operations are now resuming.
JPL quotes Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco as saying, "Our flight over the surface of Iapetus was like a non-stop free fall, down the rabbit hole, directly into Wonderland! Very few places in our solar system are more bizarre than the patchwork of pitch dark and snowy bright we've seen on this moon."
One side of Iapetus is dark, the other as bright as crisp new snow. As Iapetus moves in its orbit around Saturn, the dark side faces forward, and many scientists think that it swept up the dark material, perhaps originally from another moon. Learn more.
September 13, 2007
Riding with Robots:
