The Cassini spacecraft mission to explore Saturn and its phenomenal natural satellites has been one of NASA’s most successful and expectation-defying exploratory endeavors yet. The Cassini spacecraft has already provided NASA with several fantastic images of the fascinating planet and its moons and offered up an unprecedented of new information about the ringed planet. Now, Cassini appears to have amazed its controllers once again with this exceptional photographs of Saturn’s moon, Mimas.

The Cassini spacecraft mission to explore Saturn and its phenomenal natural satellites has been one of NASA’s most successful and expectation-defying exploratory endeavors yet. The Cassini spacecraft has already provided NASA with several fantastic images of the fascinating planet and its moons and offered up an unprecedented of new information about the ringed planet. Now, Cassini appears to have amazed its controllers once again with this exceptional photographs of Saturn’s moon, Mimas.

Mimas, which is sometimes referred to as the Death Star moon because of its unusual appearance, is one of the most fascinating moons in the solar system. It is notable for being the smallest celestial body in this solar system to have a perfectly rounded shape which has come about as the result of its own gravitational forces. Similar small satellites in this solar system normally do not command such equilibrium in their gravity so as to generate this kind of small. For instance, Hyperion and Phoebe, which are of similar sizes to Mimas, are both irregularly, imperfectly oval shaped satellites.

Mimas is also known for its incredibly large impact crater, which is known as the Herschel crater. William Herschel, who first discovered the phenomenal impact site estimated that it measures eight one miles in length. This is almost a third of the diameter of the entire moon. The walls of the crater are very high, measuring approximately three miles in height in some areas. Herschel’s peak, which is the highest point of the impact site, stands at almost the same height as Mount Everest. While scientists are still unaware of what hit Mimas to create this phenomenal crater, they know that the impact must have been truly tremendous. Fractures on the opposite side of the moon to the Herschel crater indicate that the object must have almost shattered Mimas into smithereens.

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