The Cassini spacecraft has captured the best view yet of Saturn’s moon Pandora, revealing a tiny, heavily cratered world covered with fine debris.
Cassini made its closest approach ever to the diminutive moon on 5 September 2005, sweeping by at a distance of 52,000 kilometres. Even from this far away, the spacecraft's narrow angle camera was able to pick up small grooves and ridges in the dust-fine icy material that has collected over Pandora’s craters.
Discovered in 1980 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, the moon is only 84 kilometres in diameter, and its two largest craters each measure about 30 kilometres.
The joint US-European Cassini space probe captured three images in infrared, ultraviolet and visible light, which were combined to create the final picture.
Pandora orbits just outside Saturn’s F ring, which actually comprises three distinct bands. Pandora and another moon, Prometheus, gravitationally corral this outer-most ring. If any of the ring’s ice and rock starts to veer off course, the two moons gravitational influence pulls it back into the ring. This causes the ring to have odd braids, ripples, knots and twists.
Because of their role in maintaining Saturn's F ring, Pandora and Prometheus are both known as shepherd moons.
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