3D print Mimas

How do you turn a region of Mimas into a 3D print?

Open the generator, switch it to Mimas, pick Herschel, a crater or a chasma from the list or drag the selection box over any other region, and choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament in a circle, square or hexagon. OrbitStudio builds the model from Mimas's measured heights and shows it in 3D before you download anything.

Generating a model and turning it around in 3D is free and needs no account. A free account adds puzzle slicing, custom frame text and a library of three models. Downloading the model takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass.

What makes Mimas worth printing?

Herschel. Mimas is a small, icy moon of Saturn, about 394 kilometers across, and Herschel is a crater about 130 kilometers wide on it, a third of the moon's own width, with walls about 5 kilometers high and a central peak about 6 kilometers high (NASA). It is what makes Mimas look like the Death Star. In OrbitStudio's height data Herschel's floor is the lowest ground on the whole moon, and a 170 kilometer box around it holds about 17 millimeters of relief on a model 200 millimeters wide, at true scale. The rest of Mimas is saturated with craters, and on the side opposite Herschel run the chasmata, long troughs that may be cracks from the same impact.

Where do the heights come from?

From a shape model of Mimas that J. R. Weirich, R. W. Gaskell, E. E. Palmer and D. L. Domingue of the Planetary Science Institute built from NASA Cassini images by stereophotoclinometry, archived in NASA's Planetary Data System in 2025 (doi:10.26033/y8wv-r303). Its record places it under Creative Commons Zero. The model is gridded at about 560 meters. OrbitStudio measures every height above Mimas's own ellipsoid, 207.8 by 196.7 by 190.6 kilometers, because Mimas is not round: on a sphere a wide box would print as a ramp. Heights run from about 10.5 kilometers below that ellipsoid, on Herschel's floor, to about 4 kilometers above it.

How small a region can be printed?

About 118 kilometers across. Below that the 560 meter grid has too few points across the model and prints as soft blobs, so the selection box stops there. That is room for Herschel with its rim, for a chasma, or for a group of craters. Models start at true scale, 1x: Mimas's relief is deep for its size, and Herschel alone fills a model.

What do the map and the globe show?

They open on our own color relief of the shape model: the heights themselves, so the box you aim on the map is what prints. The menu also offers Cassini's images of Mimas, the imaging team's global map in NASA's Planetary Data System and Paul Schenk's (Lunar and Planetary Institute) enhanced color map of 2014, which combines infrared, green and ultraviolet images and is not what an eye would see. Neither is a photograph: both are patchworks of hundreds of images under different suns, and they can sit a few kilometers off the shape model in places, so aim the box on the height map.

Can Mimas be printed in more than one color?

No, a Mimas model prints in one filament of your choice. Multicolor terrain takes its colors from images of the ground, and Mimas's image maps do not line up closely enough with its shape model: measured, they sit up to almost 5 kilometers off it, which would put colors beside the craters they belong to. The frame, the frame text, the puzzle cover and the wall mount work as they do on every other world.

Which Mimas places are built in?

Thirty-three, in three groups: Herschel, twenty-seven craters and five chasmata. All are names the IAU has approved; most come from the legends of King Arthur. Places that sit across the 180° line or on a pole are left out, Arthur among them. Each one below opens the generator on Mimas, already flown to it.

Herschel

Craters

Chasmata

What is OrbitStudio?

OrbitStudio turns real space data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with the parts already separated and colored. No CAD, no mesh repair.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Vesta, Ceres, Enceladus, Pluto and Charon too.

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.