Before reading this report on MSNBC, I know nothing about Hyperion, Saturn’s eighth-largest moon. One of the strangest moons in our solar system is Hyperion, a Saturnian satellite so pockmarked by deep craters that it looks like a giant, rotating bath sponge adrift in space.
New image analyses suggest the moon's odd appearance is the result of a highly porous surface that preserves craters, allowing them to remain nearly as pristine as the day they were created.
The finding is just one of several new details about the quirky moon revealed in two studies published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Scientists determined that Hyperion is composed mostly of water ice and that the bottoms of its craters are covered in a dark red gunk that could be the key to resolving some of the moon's other strange properties.
Hyperion is all kinds of weird. It is one of the largest non-spherical bodies in the solar system. The moon is oval-shaped and about 250 miles (400 kilometers) at its widest point. Unlike most of Saturn's other satellites, it is not tidally locked to the ringed planet. Earth's moon is tidally locked, which is why we always see the same face of it. Instead, Hyperion undergoes "chaotic rotation," meaning its axis of rotation shifts so much that scientists can't reliably predict its orientation in space.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Hyperion, however, is its extremely pitted appearance. Hundreds of craters cover the surface, with most averaging 1 to 6 miles (1.6 to 10 kilometers) wide.
The latest analyses of data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its flybys of Hyperion in 2005 and 2006 show that about 40 percent of the moon is empty space.
The new analyses also confirmed that Hyperion is composed mostly of water ice with very little rock.
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→Mystery of Saturnian Moon Hyperion, aka Space Sponge, Solved
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