Apr 01, 2015 12:58 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has beamed back stunningly detailed photos of Rhea, one of Saturn's lesser known moons.

The space agency said in an official news release the spacecraft was able to get a close-up of the moon because it shifted from a polar orbit to an equatorial one. The latter will last throughout the end of the year.

During its polar orbit, Cassini delivered fascinating images of Saturn and its two major moons, Enceladus and Titan. Most famous of Cassini's photography is an image of the great ringed planet backlit by the sun.

NASA released two images of Rhea in a side-by-side view. Both images were captured Feb. 9 within an hour-and-a-half of one another, the space agency said. The image farther zoomed in on Rhea is the highest resolution image of the moon to date.

"The views show an expanded range of colors from those visible to human eyes in order to highlight subtle color variations across Rhea's surface," NASA said in the release. "In natural color, the moon's surface is fairly uniform."

A collaborative effort with the European and Italian Space Agencies, NASA launched the Cassini- Huygens mission in 1997 and in addition to stunning photography, the spacecraft has helped scientists learn more about Enceladus' potential hospitality toward life.

"The Cassini mission and the CAPS instrument in particular have been gradually revealing the nature of the subsurface ocean on Enceladus," Chris McKay, a NASA astrobiologist, told Bioscience Technology. "The earlier indication of salt, and other results published over the years, have pointed toward a hot water rock reaction. So this was just confirmation of the result.

"All together, the data may make a strong case that the ocean down there is habitable, rich in organics and nutrients, and rich in energy in the form life can use."

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