Looking like sand on a beach after a hard rain, the surface of Rhea is literally coated with craters of all sizes, to the point where it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins.
These raw images are fresh in from Cassini’s flyby of Saturn’s second-largest moon, which occurred yesterday. The spacecraft passed over the 950-mile-wide moon at an altitude of about 62 miles. The last time Cassini performed a targeted approach of Rhea was in November of 2005.
Rhea is made up of three-quarters ice and a quarter rock. The walls of the scarps and ridges that run across its battered surface are highly reflective as they expose the bright ice beneath the surrounding darker ground.
Images: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
The image below has been adjusted from its original in order to see surface details better.
Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/J. Major
Lights in the Dark 