Skip to footer

Spectacular photos of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus captured by Cassini

Photos from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show the north pole of Enceladus.

|
Space Science Institute/JPL-Caltech/NASA/Reuters
The north pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is seen in an image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft taken October 14, 2015. The moon's north pole lies approximately at the top of this view from Cassini's wide-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 4,000 miles (6,000 kilometers) from Enceladus.
|
Space Science Institute/JPL-Caltech/NASA
NASA's Cassini spacecraft photographed this cratered terrain near the north pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus during a close flyby on Oct. 14, 2015. Thin fractures slice through the craters — part of a network of similar cracks that wrap around the satellite.
|
Space Science Institute/JPL-Caltech/NASA
This image, captured on Oct. 14, 2015 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows heavily cratered terrain around the north pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured its best-ever looks at the north polar region of Saturn's ocean-harboring moon, Enceladus.

Cassini zoomed within 1,142 miles (1,838 kilometers) of Enceladus Wednesday (Oct. 14), performing its 20th close flyby of the icy satellite since arriving in the Saturn system in 2004. The spacecraft has already beamed home some of the new close-encounter images, and more will come down to Earth in the next few days, NASA officials said.

Many of Cassini's previous Enceladus flybys occurred when the moon's far northern reaches were cloaked in winter darkness. But northern summer has arrived in the Saturn system, and the recent flyby brought the mysterious region out into the light. [Photos of Enceladus, Saturn's Icy Moon]

"The northern regions are crisscrossed by a spidery network of gossamer-thin cracks that slice through the craters," Cassini imaging team member Paul Helfenstein, of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said in a statement. "These thin cracks are ubiquitous on Enceladus, and now we see that they extend across the northern terrains as well."

Cassini spotted powerful water-ice geysers near Enceladus' south pole in 2005. These jets are blasting into space material from the ocean of liquid water that sloshes beneath Enceladus' ice shell, scientists say.

Mission scientists will scan the new flyby images for signs of activity coming from the north polar region as well, NASA officials said.

Wednesday's flyby serves as a prelude to another upcoming close encounter: On Oct. 28, Cassini will cruise within just 30 miles (49 km) of Enceladus' south polar region, NASA officials said.

"During the encounter, Cassini will make its deepest-ever dive through the moon's plume of icy spray, sampling the chemistry of the extraterrestrial ocean beneath the ice," agency officials wrote in the same statement.

"Mission scientists are hopeful data from that flyby will provide evidence of how much hydrothermal activity is occurring in the moon's ocean, along with more detailed insights about the ocean's chemistry —both of which relate to the potential habitability of Enceladus," they added.

Cassini will fly by Enceladus again on Dec. 19, approaching within 3,106 miles (4,999 km) of the satellite and gathering data that should help scientists gauge how much heat is coming from the satellite's interior. (That heat is generated by friction, which itself is primarily the result of Saturn's powerful gravitational pull, researchers say.)

Those two future flybys will be Cassini's last close encounters with the 314-mile-wide (505 km) Enceladus. Cassini will end its $3.2 billion mission — which is a collaboration involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — with an intentional death dive into Saturn's thick atmosphere in September 2017.

You can see more Enceladus images from Wednesday's flyby here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/enceladus20151014/

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Copyright 2015 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Spectacular photos of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus captured by Cassini
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1016/Spectacular-photos-of-Saturn-s-icy-moon-Enceladus-captured-by-Cassini
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe