This map of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus illustrates the regions
that will be imaged by the Cassini spacecraft's second very close flyby on
March 9, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft is expected to pass
approximately 500 kilometers (310 miles) above the moon's surface. This
is Cassini's closest planned approach to Enceladus during the four-year
primary mission.Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing
resolutions, listed in the legend at the bottom.
The new high-resolution coverage will reveal details on the anti-Saturn
facing hemisphere of Enceladus, which is the transition region between
the moon's leading and trailing hemispheres.
A high-resolution mosaic was produced following Cassini's previous close
Enceladus flyby, which occurred on Feb. 17, 2005.The mosaic showed areas
that appeared to be relatively smooth in images from NASA's Voyager
spacecraft actually are heavily wrinkled and fractured.
The map was made from images obtained by both the Cassini and Voyager
spacecraft. The Cassini images used here include data acquired during the
previous flyby on Feb. 17, 2005.
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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.
