A radar picture shows a 25-mile-wide (40-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Saturn’s moon Titan—only the eighth crater yet found on the moon’s surface. The image was released August 29 by scientists with NASA’s Cassini mission. While Saturn’s other moons have many thousands of craters, such features are rare on Titan. For starters, the large moon’s dense atmosphere burns up smaller impacting bodies before they can reach the surface. The craters that do form are often hard to recognize or disappear entirely as they are eroded by geological processes, such as wind and possibly icy volcanism.
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A radar picture shows a 25-mile-wide (40-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Saturn’s moon Titan—only the eighth crater yet found on the moon’s surface. The image was released August 29 by scientists with NASA’s Cassini mission.

While Saturn’s other moons have many thousands of craters, such features are rare on Titan. For starters, the large moon’s dense atmosphere burns up smaller impacting bodies before they can reach the surface.

The craters that do form are often hard to recognize or disappear entirely as they are eroded by geological processes, such as wind and possibly icy volcanism.

Source: National Geographic

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