[meteorite-list] Cassini Captures Ice Queen Helene

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-186  

Cassini Captures Ice Queen Helene
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
June 20, 2011

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully completed its second-closest
encounter with Saturn's icy moon Helene, beaming down raw images of the
small moon. At closest approach, on June 18, Cassini flew within 4,330
miles (6,968 kilometers) of Helene's surface. It was the second closest
approach to Helene of the entire mission.

Cassini passed from Helene's night side to the moon's sunlit side. It
also captured images of the Saturn-facing side of the moon in sunlight,
a region that was only illuminated by sunlight reflected off Saturn the
last time Cassini was close, in March 2010. This flyby will enable
scientists to finish creating a global map of Helene, so they can better
understand the history of impacts to the moon and gully-like features
seen on previous flybys.

The closest Helene encounter of the mission took place on March 10,
2010, when Cassini flew within 1,131 miles (1,820 kilometers) of the moon.

The latest raw images are online at:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/ .

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras
were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based
at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jia-rui.c.cook at jpl.nasa.gov

2011-186