Fracture on one of Saturn’s Moons

The SESDA II Cassini team played a vital role in the production of remarkable new surface thermal maps of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. A recent spacecraft flyby of the southern pole yielded highly detailed images of the moon’s surface that reveal amazing features such as jets spewing icy crystals and organic particles from frigid valleys, and a mysterious fracture with glowing hot spots. Thermal maps of the fracture were produced with the Cassini/Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) and were highlighted in a mission news release.

SESDA II personnel were instrumental in generating the thermal maps by designing and testing the commands to record the observations, and by producing the calibrated spectra used to derive the temperature measurements.

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