Abstract
Photographs from Voyager Missions reveal a great variety of surface features for the icy satellites of Saturn1. Mimas is covered with many old craters. Enceladus has a rather smooth surface with few and rather young craters. Some parts of Dione's surface have an important crater density, whereas other parts are relatively smooth. Thus some of Saturn's icy satellites seem to have undergone important surface modifications during their history while others did not. I suggest here that the irreversible phase transition between amorphous and cubic ice and similar phase transitions may provide a low energy resurfacing mechanism for these icy satellites.
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Klinger, J. A possible resurfacing mechanism for icy satellites. Nature 299, 41 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/299041a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/299041a0
