NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Makes Close Flyby of Saturn’s Moon Hyperion

The American space agency NASA revealed that its Cassini spacecraft successfully made its latest and final flyby of Hyperion, the Saturn’s moon.

The spacecraft on Sunday, May 31, 2015 successfully made a close fly of Saturn’s irregular and spongy moon at around 9:36 am EDT.

According to the details released by the space agency, the craft came within 21, 000 miles (34,000 km) of Hyperion’s surface.

NASA scientists said that this was not the spacecraft’s closest approach but certainly it was close enough to gather some incredible images of the porous celestial body.

A mages with a color composite was made using the images sent back home by the craft. Those images were in optical wavelengths and had some contrast enhancement and a bit of color saturation boosting as well.

Located at almost 255 x 163 x 137 miles (410 x 262 x 220 kilometers), Hyperion is the largest of Saturn’s irregularly-shaped moons and its eighth-largest overall.

Scientists said due to the moons porosity and low density, impacts on Hyperion tend to create punched-in craters with very less to no ejecta, which provided this strange moon with its sponge like appearance.

Hyperion for the first time was discovered in 1848 and is located four times as far from Saturn as earth’s Moon is from earth.

This strange looking moon completes an orbit every 21 days, getting gravitational tugs and nudges from its inner neighbor Titan as it passes.

Cassini will not come this close to Hyperion again as it has to complete its mission, which will come to an end in September 2017, said agency.