ITHACA, N.Y., Oct. 27 (UPI) — On Wednesday, NASA’s Cassini probe will descend to an altitude of just 30 miles above Saturn’s sixth-largest moon. Its intimate approach will plunge the spacecraft through the icy plume sprayed from the southern pole of Enceladus.
Researchers hope samples collected during the flyby will offer new clues to the nature of the moon’s internal oceans.
“The global nature of Enceladus’ ocean and the inference that hydrothermal systems might exist at the ocean’s base strengthen the case that this small moon of Saturn may have environments similar to those at the bottom of our own ocean,” Cassini mission scientist Jonathan Lunine, a researcher from Cornell University, said in a press release earlier this month. “It is therefore very tempting to imagine that life could exist in such a habitable realm, a billion miles from our home.”
Specifically, Lunine and his colleagues want to understand how much hydrothermal activity is going on in the liquid beneath Enceladus’ icy shell, and what that hydrothermal activity might say about the habitability of the moon’s ocean.
The probe has maneuvered closer to the surface before, and also passed through upper elevations of the plume, but Cassini has never traveled this low through the icy spray ejected from fissures on the moon’s south pole. By swinging through the icy plume at such a low altitude, scientists hope Cassini will pick up larger molecules and reveal the chemistry of the moon’s ocean and lower atmosphere.
A number of questions about Enceladus remain. How old is the moon’s hydrothermal activity? How does the icy spray makes its way from the ocean to the surface? How much material is actually being ejected, and what are the shapes and forms of its dispersal? Are they jet-like columns or large clouds?
Scientists hope the flyby can begin to answer these questions and others.
Cassini has been doing remarkable work for nearly two decades. First launched in 1997, the probe will continue conducting science missions through 2017. It has been orbiting Saturn and its moons since 2004. Wednesday’s flyby is Cassini’s last scheduled encounter with Enceladus.
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