Fact Sheet
Battered Moon
The surface of Saturn's moon Tethys is scarred by the impacts of thousands of meteorites, which have left craters on top of craters. This suggests that the surface of Tethys is extremely old, and has not been reshaped by any processes of the moon itself, such as flowing ice or "Tethys-quakes." Scientists compiled this color image from several pictures snapped by the Cassini spacecraft as it few less than 160,000 miles (256,000 km) from Tethys in late October. Cassini is the most expensive planetary mission in history, with total costs exceeding $3 billion.[NASA/JPL/SSI]
|