Saturn's 60th moon discovered

Saturn's 60th moon discovered
LONDON: Scientists have recently discovered the 60th moon of Saturn. They have identified the new moon as orbiting Saturn while studying inputs sent by the Cassini spacecraft.

Carl Murray, a member of the scientists' team from Queen Mary, University of London, which is studying the images sent by the powerful cameras of Cassini, said the new moon, which is nearly 1.2 miles wide, has its orbiting path between two other earlier discovered moons of the planet, Methone and Pallene.

Cassini first observed the moon on 30 May.

The new moon first came to the notice of scientists as a faint dot in several images sent by Cassini on the rings of Saturn. The scientists then "played" an interplanetary detective, searching for more clues of the moon in images sent by the spacecraft. They then located several images confirming the presence of the moon. Murray said, "With these new data sets we were able to establish a good orbit for the new moon. Knowing where the moons are at all times is important to the Cassini mission for several reasons."

Scientists feel the number of moons of Saturn could go up further. Murray said when the Cassini mission was launched there were only 18 known moons of Saturn.

The scientists have temporarily named the moon as "Frank". It is largely made of ice and rock as in the case of most of Saturn's other moons. This is the fifth moon discovered by the Cassini imaging team.

The scientists believe Frank, along with Methone and Pallene, could be a family of moons of the planet. Murray said the Cassini's cameras will now search for more members of the family. The spacecraft will be coming within 7,300 miles of the planet in December 2009, when the scientists will have a better chance to explore Frank.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative venture of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The spacecraft was launched in 1997 to explore Saturn. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, manages the mission. The Cassini space probe reached its destination sometime in 2004. The Huygens probe, which was originally on board Cassini, landed on one of Saturn's moons, Titan, in 2005.