Late-stage impacts and the orbital and thermal evolution of Tethys

An inferred ancient episode of heating and deformation on Tethys has been attributed to its passage through a 3:2 resonance with Dione (Chen, E.M.A., Nimmo, F. [2008]. Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, 19203). The satellites encounter, and are trapped into, the e-Dione resonance before reaching the e-Tethys resonance, limiting the degree to which Tethys is tidally heated. However, for an initial Dione eccentricity >0.016, Tethys’ eccentricity becomes large enough to generate the inferred heat flow via tidal dissipation. While capture into the e-Dione resonance is easy, breaking the resonance (to allow Tethys to evolve to its current state) is very difficult. The resonance is stable even for large initial Dione eccentricities, and is not broken by perturbations from nearby resonances (e.g. the Rhea–Dione 5:3 resonance). Our preferred explanation is that the Tethyan impactor which formed the younger Odysseus impact basin also broke the 3:2 resonance. Simultaneously satisfying the observed basin size and the requirement to break the resonance requires a large (≈250 km diameter) and slow (≈0.5 km/s) impactor, possibly a saturnian satellite in a nearby crossing orbit with Tethys. Late-stage final impacts of this kind are a common feature of satellite formation models (Canup, R.M., Ward, W.R. [2006]. Nature 441, 834–839).