The international Cassini spacecraft's weekend plunge past Saturn's moon Mimas has returned intriguing images of the "Death Star"-lookalike orb, NASA says.

Flying about 5,900 miles high, the spacecraft took close images of the 88-mile-wide Herschel crater that marks the 246-mile-wide moon's surface.

"Scientists hope the encounter will help them explain why the moon was not blown to smithereens when the impact happened," says Jia-Rui Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. "They will also be trying to count smaller dings inside the basin of Herschel Crater so they can better estimate its age." 

Herschel Crater spans about one-third of the entire moon's width. The crater's walls are 3 miles high, and parts of the floor are 6 miles deep, Cook says.

Read entire article