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Wednesday\u2019s flyby, the second and closest of the three flybys, took Cassini just 49 kilometers (30 miles) above the surface of Enceladus and directly into the deepest accessible parts of the moon\u2019s southern ejecta plumes.<\/p>\nContinuing its exploration at the ringed giant of the solar system, NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft has completed a dive through the ice plume ejecta material of the Saturnian moon Enceladus. The dive, designed to collect data about the mysterious subterranean salt water ocean on Enceladus, took Cassini on its deepest dive ever into the mysterious plumes of the ice moon.<\/p>\n
Cassini\u2019s latest dive:<\/p>\n
Following from several close encounters with Enceladus in recent years, NASA is in the midst of sending its tenured Saturnian spacecraft through a series of three close flybys \u2014 the first of which occurred on 14 October \u2014 of the icy moon.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s flyby, the second and closest of the three flybys, took Cassini just 49 kilometers (30 miles) above the surface of Enceladus and directly into the deepest accessible parts of the moon\u2019s southern ejecta plumes.<\/p>\n
While this approach is not the closest the craft has ever come to Enceladus (that occurred in October 2008 when Cassini passed just 25 kilometers (16 miles) above the icy moon\u2019s surface), it was the lowest-altitude with which Cassini will pass through an active ejecta plume.<\/p>\n
And with good reason. This deep dive will allow Cassini to collect valuable scientific data regarding the subterranean aspect of Enceladus\u2019 salt water ocean.<\/p>\n
Specifically, Cassini scientists are hopeful that data from Wednesday\u2019s flyby will provide evidence of how much hydrothermal activity is occurring in the moon\u2019s subterranean ocean and how the amount of activity impacts the habitability of Enceladus\u2019 ocean.<\/p>\n
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On Thursday, Cassini scientists confirmed the first data confirming the flyby had arrived, although images only began to arrive on Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Aerospace industry analysis (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n Early in its mission at Saturn, Cassini discovered Enceladus\u2019 remarkable geologic activity, including a towering plume of ice, water vapor, and organic molecules spraying from its south polar region.<\/p>\n Subsequent Cassini observations and flybys of Enceladus confirmed the presence of a large, subterranean global ocean, likely supported by hydrothermal activity.<\/p>\n The discovery skyrocketed Enceladus into a unique and very small list of planets and moons holding the potential ingredients needed to support simple life.<\/p>\n At that point, Enceladus became a prime contender for consideration from Cassini as the spacecraft lives out the remainder of its life at Saturn \u2014 called the \u201cCassini Grand Finale\u201d \u2014 leading to the end of the craft\u2019s mission on 15 September 2017 with a destructive entry into Saturn\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n The choice to end Cassini\u2019s mission with destruction instead of permanent placement into a stable orbit of Saturn outside of Phoebe\u2019s orbit was chosen in part due to a lack of continued scientific possibilities from Cassini as well as the rising nature of habitability of Saturn\u2019s moons and a direct corresponding need to protect those moons from possible contamination from Cassini.<\/p>\n To this end, scientists hope that Wednesday\u2019s flyby will provide insights about how much hydrothermal activity \u2014 chemistry involving rock and hot water \u2014 is occurring within Enceladus, as this activity could have important implications for the potential habitability of the ocean for simple forms of life.<\/p>\n If the spacecraft\u2019s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) instrument detects molecular hydrogen as it travels through the plume, scientists may get the measurements they need to answer these questions.<\/p>\n \u201cConfirmation of molecular hydrogen in the plume would be an independent line of evidence that hydrothermal activity is taking place in the Enceladus ocean, on the seafloor,\u201d said Hunter Waite, INMS team lead at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.<\/p>\n \u201cThe amount of hydrogen would reveal how much hydrothermal activity is going on.\u201d<\/p>\n Moreover, Wednesday\u2019s encounter will help scientists better understand the chemistry of the plumes emanating from Enceladus\u2019 south polar region.<\/p>\n The CDA, capable of detecting up to 10,000 particles per second from Enceladus\u2019 ejecta plume, is expected to reveal how much material the plume is spraying from the moon\u2019s ocean into the space around Saturn.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s really no room for ambiguity,\u201d said Sascha Kempf, a CDA team co-investigator at the University of Colorado at Boulder.<\/p>\n \u201cThe data will either match what our models are telling us about the rate at which the plume is producing material, or our concept of how the plume works needs additional thought.\u201d<\/p>\n Understanding this aspect of Enceladus is imperative to understanding how long the moon as been active.<\/p>\n \u201cCassini truly has been a discovery machine for more than a decade,\u201d said Curt Niebur, Cassini program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cThis incredible plunge through the Enceladus plume is an amazing opportunity for NASA and its international partners on the Cassini mission to ask, \u2018Can an icy ocean world host the ingredients for life?’\u201d<\/p>\n Given the importance to astrobiology, it will be several months before detailed findings of Wednesday\u2019s flyby are announced.<\/p>\n In fact, Cassini will likely have completed the third and final of this series of close flybys of Enceladus on 19 December before results of the flyby are announced.<\/p>\n (Images via NASA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Continuing its exploration at the ringed giant of the solar system, NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft has completed a dive through the ice plume ejecta material of the Saturnian moon Enceladus. The dive, designed to collect data about the mysterious subterranean salt water ocean on Enceladus, took Cassini on its deepest dive ever into the mysterious plumes of the ice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2394,1559],"class_list":["post-39209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cassini","tag-enceladus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"2015-10-29-170638\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/2015-10-29-170638-350x265.jpg\")
While the recent and upcoming flybys of Enceladus are not designed to detect life, they will provide powerful new insights about how habitable the ocean environment is within Enceladus.<\/p>\nSee Also<\/h4>\n
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![\"2015-10-29-170822\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/2015-10-29-170822-350x275.jpg\")
The low altitude of the encounter was, in part, intended to afford Cassini\u2019s instruments \u2014 specifically, the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) \u2014 greater sensitivity to heavier, more massive molecules, including organics, than the spacecraft has observed during previous, higher-altitude passes through the plume.<\/p>\n![\"2015-10-29-171503\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/2015-10-29-171503-350x261.jpg\")
Likewise, the flyby was designed to help solve the mystery of whether Enceladus\u2019 plumes are composed of column-like, individual jets, or sinuous, icy curtain eruptions \u2014 or a combination of both.<\/p>\n