#Saturn moon atlas series#

#Saturn moon atlas series#

The spacecraft will swing by Saturn’s largest moon Titan, covered in rain-replenished lakes of liquid methane and ethane, on April 22 and use gravity to reshape its orbit and begin a series of passages between the planet’s cloud tops and innermost ring. 15 dive into Saturn’s atmosphere to avoid an inadvertent collision with one of the planet’s potentially habitable moons. Running low on fuel, Cassini is in the final months of its mission, heading for a crushing Sept. Scientists believe the equatorial ridges on Pan and Atlas may have formed as the moons collect grains of ice and dust from nearby rings.Ītlas was discovered in 1980 in imagery taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft during its encounter with Saturn, and it orbits around 85,500 miles (137,600 kilometers) from the planet, completing one lap every 14.4 hours. Like Pan, Atlas looks like a miniature version of Saturn, with a bulbous central body and a smooth ridge spanning its equator. The disk-shaped moon is about 19 miles (30 kilometers) across, slightly larger than the moon Pan, which is similar in appearance.Ĭassini took the closest-ever pictures of Pan during a flyby in early March, with its shape drawing comparisons to a walnut or ravioli. One of Saturn’s peculiar moons has received an up-close look from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which sent back the best-ever pictures of Atlas, an object shaped like a flying saucer orbiting just outside the planet’s rings.Ĭassini took the images of Atlas on April 12 as it passed within about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers) of the airless moon.Ītlas circles Saturn just outside the A ring, the outermost of the planet’s main, bright rings, according to NASA. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute This unprocessed image of Saturn’s moon Atlas was taken on April 12, 2017, by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.