Saturn’s Big 60
Images from NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft have revealed the sixtieth moon orbiting Saturn, the fifth of Saturn’s moons discovered by the Cassini imaging team. Measuring only 1.2 miles across, composed mostly of ice and rock, the newly discovered moon is located between the orbits of Methone and Pallene, both of which were also discovered by the Cassini imaging team in 2004. The object was first seen as a barely perceptible dot, detected by the imaging team scientists, using the spacecraft’s powerful wide-angle camera. After poring over other Cassini images, the scientists were able to locate other detections, enabling them to establish a good orbit for the new moon.
Knowing the location of Saturn’s moons is important primarily to enable the Cassini spacecraft to avoid colliding with any undiscovered objects, and information about them will aid in understanding the workings of Saturn’s system of rings. A newly discovered moon also presents a possibility for designing scientific experiments to be carried out if future opportunities arise. A chance to explore this moon could occur when Cassini’s path takes it to within 7,300 miles in December of 2009.
This latest discovery is about 1.09 million miles from Saturn and might be one of a larger group of moons as yet undiscovered. It takes just over one of Saturn’s days to complete an orbit, and, because its orbit is similar to that of Methone and Pallene, scientists theorize they could be connected, perhaps the result of a collision or a group of objects which failed to develop into a larger moon.
At the time the Cassini mission was launched in 1997, scientists knew of only eighteen moons orbiting the ringed planet, but between ground-based telescopes and the Cassini spacecraft, the number has increased more than three-fold. The current tally of our solar system’s planetary moons has Jupiter first with 63 and Saturn coming in second with 60, although there might be more which are as yet unconfirmed.
Now known simply as Frank, it will later be given an official name by the International Astronomical Union. Frank’s neighboring moons Methone and Pallene were named for two of the seven daughters of Alkyoneus, who was killed by Hercules, so the name given to the newly discovered moon will probably be taken from Greek mythology as well.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a joint undertaking by NASA, The European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory managing the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The JPL also designed, developed, and assembled Cassini’s orbiter and cameras.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
