Which Saturn moon has the giant impact basin named Tirawa? Rhea has the giant impact basin named Tirawa.
Tirawa is a large, degraded peak-ring impact basin on Rhea’s Saturn-facing? No—more precisely, it lies on Rhea’s hemisphere facing away from Saturn. The basin is roughly 350 kilometers across and is the largest identified impact structure on Rhea. Its name comes from Tirawa, a creator deity in Pawnee mythology.
Voyager 1 first glimpsed the feature during its November 1980 encounter with Saturn. Later observations by the Cassini spacecraft revealed more of its elongated shape and internal ring structure. Tirawa overlaps the older, more degraded Mamaldi basin, providing evidence of a long and heavily cratered surface history.
Rhea is often confused with Dione because both are icy moons with similar-looking bright and dark terrains. Another useful comparison is Tethys’s Odysseus basin, which is similar in scale. Tirawa is not a feature on Enceladus or Mimas; those moons are better known for active plumes and distinctive cratered terrain, respectively.