During a daring pass by the outer edges of Saturn’s main rings, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was able to snap one of the highest resolution pictures of the planet’s moon Pandora ever.
The photo was taken on December 18, 2016 when Cassini made what is thought to be its closest flyby of Pandora, whizzing by the moon at a distance of about 40,500 kilometers (25,200 miles); the image scale is 420 meters (787 feet) per pixel.
Cassini-Huygens is a joint effort between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Launched in 1997, the spacecraft Cassini arrived at its destination in 2004 and since then has been studying Saturn and its moons from orbit. Huygens, a probe carried by Cassini, landed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in 2005.
