Enceladus (APOD 05 Nov 2008)

[JohnD]

No craters?

There's a small (well, less than my little finger nail) area, just to 10 o'clock of the picture center. It looks flat and has slight raying within it. Could this be a crater? Filled with frozen water, liquified in the impact?

If these are present - and why not? - they could be landing areas, if they can be mapped and be long lasting enough.

John

[bystander]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081105.html

I don't think I see to what you are referrring.

[orin stepanek]

I'm sure NASA will find some landing sites if they decide to go there. I don't want to go though. It's too coooold,
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081105.html

Orin

[iamlucky13]

I see a couple things that could potentially be craters, but really the landscape is so distorted I wouldn't try to say for certain. Enceladus isn't completely devoid of craters, by the way. It's just that it's surface is active enough that it tends to cover them over in relatively short time periods.

Also, I would suppose there are relatively flat areas outside of the heavily striped zones that a potential probe could land, but none are being proposed for the foreseeable future, so it's a rather academic question.