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Spongy-looking Hyperion tumbles into Cassini's view CASSINI NEWS RELEASE Posted: July 14, 2005
The views were acquired between June 9 and June 11, 2005, during Cassini's first brush with Hyperion. Hyperion is decidedly non-spherical and its unusual shape is easy to see in the movie, which was acquired over the course of two and a half days. Jagged outlines visible on the moon's surface are indicators of large impacts that have chipped away at its shape like a sculptor. Preliminary estimates of its density show that Hyperion is only about 60 percent as dense as solid water ice, indicating that much of its interior (40 percent or more) must be empty space. This makes the moon more like an icy rubble pile than a solid body. In both the movie and the 3D image, craters are visible on the moonıs surface down to the limit of resolution, about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel. The fresh appearance of most of these craters, combined with their high spatial density, makes Hyperion look something like a sponge. The moon's spongy-looking exterior is an interesting coincidence, as much of Hyperionıs interior appears to consist of voids. Hyperion is close to the size limit where, like a child compacting a snowball, internal pressure due to the moonıs own gravity will begin to crush weak materials like ice, closing pore spaces and eventually creating a more nearly spherical shape. The images used to create these views were obtained with Cassini's narrow-angle camera at distances ranging from approximately 815,000 to 168,000 kilometers (506,000 to 104,000 miles) from Hyperion. Cassini will fly within 510 kilometers (317 miles) of Hyperion on Sept. 26, 2005. 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, D.C. 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, Boulder, Colo. |
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This post-scrub news conference occurred at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, July 13 following postponement of Discovery's launch. (31min 30sec file)
Play video:
Launch of space shuttle Discovery on the return to flight mission was scrubbed because of trouble with engine cutoff sensors in the external tank. (4min 45sec file)
The five-man, two-woman astronaut crew departs the Operations and Checkout Building to board the AstroVan for the ride to launch pad 39B. (3min 01sec file)
The astronauts -- in two groups -- don their launch and entry partial pressure suits before heading to the pad.
Discovery's seven astronauts gather around the dining room table in crew quarters for a pre-launch snack before suiting up and heading to the pad. (1min 53sec file)
Pad 39B's Rotating Service Structure is retracted from around shuttle Discovery Tuesday night in preparation for the first launch attempt. (4min 36sec file)
