PASADENA, Calif., March 31 (UPI) -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its fourth flyby of Saturn's giant moon Titan on Thursday.
At its closest approach, the spacecraft passed approximately 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) above the smog-covered moon's surface. Using a special radar camera called synthetic aperture, Cassini continued one of its primary mission objectives by taking more detailed images of the moon's surface. The images will be combined with those collected during flybys last October and February of this year.
Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer also targeted the surface during the flyby, yielding data in addition to what the radar camera collected.
At about 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) across, Titan is the solar system's second largest moon, smaller only than Jupiter's moon Ganymede and larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto.
Cassini is scheduled to return to Titan on April 16 and pass as close as 637 miles (1,025 kilometers).
