Saturn looks to have a new natural satellite, and her name is Peggy.

Evidence of the relatively small, icy object, estimated to be no more than half a mile in diameter, was spotted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's robot spacecraft Cassini, which has been orbiting the ringed gas giant since 2004.

NASA has announced the object that appears as a newly-visible disturbance at the very edge of Saturn's outermost A ring -- and informally dubbed "Peggy" -- may be a new Jovian moon.

The observations have been detailed online in the journal Icarus.

"We have not seen anything like this before," the report's lead author, Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London, said in a NASA news release. "We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right."

Images taken with Cassini's narrow angle camera April 15, 2013 revealed disturbances at the very edge the A ring, including an arc that appears about 20 percent brighter than its surroundings and measures an estimated 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) long and 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide.

Scientists also eyed unusual bumps in the usually-smooth profile at the ring's edge; they've deduced the arc and protuberances are caused by the gravitational effects of a nearby object.

Not expected to grow any larger, Peggy may even be disintegrating, say scientists.

Regardless, the process of the possible moon's formation and outward movement helps researchers better understand how Saturn's previously-identified ice moons such as the cloud-wrapped Titan and Enceladus, which only recently was determined to hold a subterranean ocean of water, may have formed through a similar fashion long ago, when the planet's rings may have been even larger than they are today.

As well, discovery of the moon's formation provides added data about how Earth and other planets in the solar system might have formed and migrated away from the sun.

So far, Peggy is too small to see in images, but, according to mission scientist Linda Spilker at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Cassini will maneuver closer to the outer edge of the A ring in late 2016 in an effort to study the new member of Saturn's obital family in much more detail and maybe even record images of it.

"Witnessing the possible birth of a tiny moon is an exciting, unexpected event," Spilker said.