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Space & Spaceflight

Relax, This Moon Isn’t A Death Star

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Mimas is a 250 mile wide moon in orbit around Saturn, mostly nonedescript apart from its appearance: it looks creepily, unsettlingly like it’s about to vapourize Saturn and all of its pretty rings.

This photo was taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft10 years ago, 1.3 million miles away from Mimas. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about Saturn’s little friend: not only does it have a secret identity as Pac-Man, but it is also hiding a frozen lake (or an irregularly shaped core) under that surface, right next to the thermal exhaust port.

Image credit: NASA


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