News in Brief Planetary Science

Surprises lurk inside a Saturn moon

Mimas may hide a subsurface sea or oddly shaped core

Saturn’s smallest major moon, Mimas

NOT A SPACE STATION  Saturn’s smallest major moon, the nearly 400-kilometer-wide Mimas, shows off a crater seemingly inspired by Star Wars in this 2010 image from the Cassini spacecraft. 

JPL-Caltech/NASA, Space Science Institute

By Christopher Crockett

- More than 2 years ago

A subsurface sea or a roughly football-shaped core might lie within Mimas, the smallest of Saturn’s major moons, new observations indicate.