NASA’s Cassini spacecraft Wednesday will plunge into the icy plume flowing from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, looking for clues into the habitability of the moon’s ocean.
Enceladus has a global water ocean under its icy crust and likely hydrothermal activity. That means it could have the ingredients to support simple life.
The spacecraft will venture just 30 miles above the surface, flying through the plume spraying from the moon’s south pole. NASA scientists said Monday they hope gas and particle samples will offer new insights into the moon’s potential habitability. Cassini has flown closer to the surface of Enceladus but never this low directly through the active plume.
Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004 and has been making discoveries at the ringed planet ever since. While the spacecraft cannot detect life, scientists say its sensors can provide information about how habitable the ocean environment is within Enceladus, a celestial body about 1/7 the size of Earth’s moon.
Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said her team hopes to better understand the chemistry of the plume and how much hydrothermal activity – chemistry involving rock and hot water – occurs within Enceladus.
Both the University of Arizona and Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute have scientists on the Cassini research team. NASA will begin receiving images and data from the flyby late Thursday or early Friday.
It will take a few weeks for a thorough analysis of the information, NASA said.