CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Goodbye to Rhea

On its fourth and final targeted flyby of Rhea, Cassini provided this stunning view of the ancient and heavily cratered surface. Billions of years of impacts have sculpted Rhea's surface into the form we see today.

With a diameter of 949 miles (1527 km) Rhea is Saturn's second-largest moon.

This view is centered on terrain at 33 degrees north latitude, 358 degrees west longitude. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 9, 2013.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2290 miles (3670 kilometers) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 92 degrees. Image scale is 72 feet (22 meters) per pixel.

The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. 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 imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Released: May 13, 2013 (PIA 14660)
Image/Caption Information 		  Goodbye to Rhea
PIA 14660
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