Aster › Space program › Phoebe
Phoebe
Position on the route: 56/130 · level needed 135 · journey (Mk0 engine) 24.7 h
By the numbers
| Diameter | ≈ 213 km |
|---|---|
| Year | 550 days (backwards) |
| Distance | 12.95 million km |
| Cassini | 11 June 2004 |
The story
Phoebe is a 213-km body that circles Saturn the opposite way to the other big moons: a captured centaur or Kuiper object. It was the first target Cassini flew past, just before entering Saturn’s orbit in 2004. The surface is dark; bright ice shows on the walls of its craters, so water ice lies under the crust.
In 2009 Spitzer found Saturn’s largest known ring around Phoebe: it stretches from about 128 to 207 Saturn radii out, and the dust that darkens one face of Iapetus comes from Phoebe.
Missions
- Voyager 2 (1981): the first image
- Cassini (2004): a close flyby
Colony note
Remote and cold; a dark ice-and-carbon body. An observation base.
What probes bring back
- The first moon Cassini flew close to, on 11 June 2004: about 213 km, a captured comet-like centaur body that orbits backwards (retrograde).
- Its dust ring (Spitzer, 2009) is the largest known in the Solar System; Phoebe’s dust darkens one face of Iapetus.