Cassini Probe to Buzz Past Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft will soon take the deepest dive ever through the plume of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Scientists hope this close flyby will shed light on what's happening beneath the moon's icy surface. With a global ocean and likely hydrothermal activity, Enceladus even have the ingredients necessary to host life.

Space scientists will soon get their best look ever at the ocean that sloshes beneath the surface of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. On October 28th, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will zoom just 30 miles (50 kilometers) above Enceladus, flying through and sampling the plume of material that erupts from the satellite's south polar region.

The plume is thought to originate from Enceladus' underground liquid-water ocean. Cassini's onboard sample analysis will hopefully provide evidence about the moon's potential to host or support life.

"On Wednesday, we will plunge deeper into the magnificent plume coming from the south pole than we ever have before, and we will collect the best samples ever from an ocean beyond Earth," Curt Niebur, Cassini program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said during a news conference.

Image Source - NASA/JPL-Caltech

There are three main science objectives for the flyby, said Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California: The mission team aims to confirm the presence of molecular hydrogen in the plume, which would provide evidence for hydrothermal activity (a potential energy source for life) in the ocean. The team also hopes to characterize the plume's chemistry and determine the nature of the plume source(s).

"We're certainly all eagerly awaiting the scientific results from this deep plunge through the plume."

The flyby will occur at about 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) Wednesday. Cassini will check in with mission control about 3 hours later, but the first encounter images likely won't be released until late Thursday or early Friday.

Scientists will probably get their first quick look at Cassini's spectrometer data on the sampled plume particles within a week after the flyby, but more in-depth analysis may take several weeks, she added.

Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 and discovered the moon's icy geysers in 2005. Cassini has flown through the plume before, but from much farther away.

"There's a lot of excitement about this particular flyby," she said. "We're certainly all eagerly awaiting the scientific results from this deep plunge through the plume."

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After Wednesday, Cassini will have one more flyby of Enceladus remaining before the end of its mission, in September 2017. On Dec. 19 of this year, the spacecraft will cruise within 3,106 miles (4,999 km) of the icy satellite, making observations that should allow mission scientists to gauge the heat flowing from Enceladus' interior.

The $3.2 billion Cassini mission, a joint effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, launched in 1997. Next year, Cassini will begin a series of manoeuvres to put itself in orbits that take it high above, and through, Saturn's rings.

As a final act, in 2017, ground controllers will command the spacecraft to plunge into the planet's atmosphere once the probe's fuel has all but run out. The hope is the probe will continue to send valuable scientific data about Saturn before it is eventually destroyed.

SOURCE  Space.com

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