NASA shares pictures of a dumpling-shaped object in space that turns out to be a...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared pictures of a space object that looks like a dumpling.

"Ravioli, pierogi, empanada? No, that... What do you see? No wrong answers," NASA asked in an Instagram post.

The space agency then clarified that the object is actually the innermost moon of Saturn.

NASA revealed that its Cassini spacecraft took the images from 15,300 miles (24,600 km) which happens to be its closest encounter with the moon, which is called Pan.

"Pan, the innermost of Saturn’s known moons, orbits the planet from inside a gap in one of Saturn's rings. It completes an orbit every 13.8 hours at an altitude of 83,000 miles (134,000 km). These two images from the Cassini spacecraft show how the spacecraft’s perspective changed as it passed within 15,300 miles (24,600 km) of Pan. This was the spacecraft's closest encounter with Pan, improving the level of detail seen on the little moon from previous observations," NASA said in the post.

Elaborating on Pan, the US space agency said that it was discovered by M.R Showalter in 1990 using images taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft nine years earlier.

On its dumpling shape, NASA said, "The ridge around Pan's equator is similar to Saturn’s moon Atlas, and gives the moon its distinctive dumpling shape."

According to NASA the Cassini spacecraft took the images from different perspectives: the image on the left appears to be taken from above the moon, while the image on the right seems to be taken from below it. "The moon has a flat ridge around its midpoint, and lines that look like they were scraped across its surface," NASA added.

In other news, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security - Regolith Explorer) recently delivered on Earth a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu in 2020. The returned samples collected from Bennu will help scientists worldwide make discoveries to better understand planet formation and the origin of organics and water that led to life on Earth, as well as benefit all of humanity by learning more about potentially hazardous asteroids.

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