USGS


Dione

Saturnian System

 All of Saturn's larger satellites are made
mostly of water ice with some lesser rock component. With the
exception of Enceladus, whose surface appears to be virtually
pure ice, these moons' surfaces are made of dirty ice, with models
suggesting increasing amount of rocky material toward their centers.
Enceladus, Tethys, and Dione all exhibit widely varied crater
densities and large canyons, indicating that they have all been
substantially affected by geologic activity. A likely geologic
process on these icy bodies is cryovolcanism, which involves partial
melting of an icy satellite's interior and resultant outpourings
of icy liquids. Ammonia-water cryovolcanism is widely suspected
on all three objects, because the amount of heat available to
drive geologic activity there is very meager, and ammonia-water
ices (an expected component of Saturnian satellites) have a very
low melting point, 176 K (-97 oC).

Dione is very similar to Tethys, though it lacks a large impact crater and its canyons are not so immense. Any geologic activity that may have occurred on Rhea occurred long ago and evidence has been obliterated by impact cratering.