Figure 1
This map of the surface of Saturn's moon Iapetus (1,436 kilometers, or 892
miles across), generated from images taken by NASA's Voyager spacecraft,
illustrates the imaging coverage planned during Cassini's flyby on Dec.
31, 2004.
Cassini will glide past Iapetus at a distance of approximately 123,400
kilometers (76,700 miles) on New Year's Eve, at a speed of about 2
kilometers per second (4,474 miles per hour). Imaging coverage will be
focused primarily on the dark terrain of Iapetus' leading hemisphere, in
the area known as Cassini Regio. The spacecraft's namesake, Jean-Dominique
Cassini, discovered Iapetus in 1672 and was only able to see the moon's
bright trailing hemisphere.
In figure 1, colored lines on the map enclose regions that will be
covered at different imaging scales as Cassini approaches Iapetus.
Images from Cassini's flyby will be superior in resolution to those
obtained by Voyager 2 in August 1981. Voyager 2 passed Iapetus at a
distance of approximately 909,000 kilometers (564,800 miles) at closest
approach, yielding a best resolution image of about 8 kilometers per
pixel. The resolution of Cassini images from this flyby will be 1.5
kilometers per pixel and better.
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 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.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the
Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
