This is an artist concept of the ring of debris that may orbit Saturn's
second-largest moon, Rhea. The suggested disk of solid material is
exaggerated in density here for clarity.
Due to a decrease in the number of electrons detected by NASA's Cassini
spacecraft on either side of the moon, scientists suggest that rings are
the likeliest cause of these electrons being blocked before they reach
Cassini.
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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The
magnetospheric imaging instrument was designed, built and is operated by
an international team led by the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns
Hopkins University, Laurel, Md.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm and the instrument team's
home page, http://sd-www.jhuapl.edu/CASSINI/index.html.
