Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Cassini-Huygens Collection
Title:
Organics Sprinkled on Hyperion
Description:
Organics Sprinkled on Hyperion
Full Description:
Hyperion, the eighth largest of Saturn's nearly 60 known moons, is covered in craters and landslides. Sprinkled over the icy surface is a thin layer of organic dust, which has somehow been concentrated in the bottoms of some of the craters, forming a reddish black deposit.

This new color map shows the composition of a portion of Hyperion's surface determined with the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer aboard the Cassini spacecraft. The new composition map is overlaid onto a previously released Cassini image of Hyperion, taken with the Imaging Science Subsystem (see Cosmic Blasting Zone).

Blue shows the maximum exposure of frozen water, red denotes carbon dioxide ice ("dry ice"), magenta indicates regions of water plus carbon dioxide, yellow is a mix of carbon dioxide and an unidentified material.

Discovered in 1848, Hyperion held its secrets until the Cassini spacecraft flew close in September 2005, revealing its icy and organic composition. Hyperion is irregular in shape, tumbles chaotically, and takes 21 days to orbit Saturn. It is 300 kilometers (180 miles) in its longest dimension.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit: http://saturn.jpl.n…The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team home page is at: http://wwwvims.lpl.…. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

*Credit:* NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Ames/Space Science Institute
Date:
July 4, 2007
Keywords:
gallery
Keywords:
images
Keywords:
Cassini
Keywords:
mission
Keywords:
Huygens
Keywords:
probe
Keywords:
Saturn
Keywords:
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Keywords:
videos
Keywords:
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Keywords:
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Keywords:
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Keywords:
spacecraft
Keywords:
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Keywords:
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Keywords:
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Keywords:
operations facilities
Keywords:
mpeg
Keywords:
Quicktime
facet_what:
Saturn
facet_what:
Cassini
facet_what:
Jupiter
facet_what:
Cassini-Huygens
facet_what:
Huygens Probe
facet_what:
Cassini Orbiter
facet_what:
Spectrometer
facet_what:
Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS)
facet_what:
Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
facet_where:
Saturn
facet_where:
Jupiter
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
California
facet_where:
Washington
facet_where:
Arizona
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_where:
Washington, D.C.
facet_when:
July 4, 2007
facet_when:
September 2005
facet_when:
1848
facet_when_year:
2005
facet_when_year:
2007
facet_when_year:
1848
UID:
SPD-SATRN-2660
original url:

Organics Sprinkled on Hyperion