Titan’s huge depression may have been created by an asteroid impact. The horizontal seam is due to the combining of several images (Image: NASA/JPL)
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spotted a titanic depression on Titan during a close pass of the moon on 15 February. The crater, or basin, is big enough to fit a country the size of Greece inside with room to spare.
The feature was probably created after an asteroid or comet struck the surface of Saturn’s giant moon. The depression is the first impact feature on Titan found by Cassini. The spacecraft’s imaging cameras had seen the bowl before, but not in such fine detail.
This is Cassini’s third pass of Titan and the second time the spacecraft has mapped it with its radar instrument. This time, Cassini flew within 1577 kilometres (980 miles) of the surface. Cassini’s probe, Huygens, got an even closer view of the moon after it parachuted down to the surface on 14 January 2005.
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“It’s reassuring to look at two parts of Titan and see similar things,” says Jonathan Lunine at the University of Arizona, Tucson, US, and one of the Cassini scientists. “At the same time, there are some new and strange things.”
This encounter with Titan marks the first time that Cassini’s radar and imaging camera have focused on the same object, significantly increasing the level of detail discovered.
Cassini’s next flyby will see it zoom past another of Saturn’s moons – Enceladus – on Thursday.
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