Close Encounter with Enceladus   
       
   Oct 27, 2015: Over 980 million miles or about 1.6 billion kilometers from   
   home, NASA's Cassini spacecraft hurtles through the starry expanse of space.   
   From its vantage point orbiting Saturn, Earth is nothing more than a miniscule   
   pinprick of light not unlike the stars framing the gorgeous ringed planet.   
       
   Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, and it has made dozens of flybys   
   of Saturn's intriguing moons. Its next close encounter with Enceladus on   
   October 28, 2015 promises potentially exciting results.   
       
   http://youtu.be/nts-bkhoMt4     
   NASA's Cassini Spacecraft is about to make a daring plunge through one of the   
   plumes emerging from Saturn's moon Enceladus.   
       
   Enceladus boasts an icy, ostensibly barren landscape riddled with deep   
   canyons, dubbed "tiger stripes." Underneath its icy exterior churns a global   
   ocean, heated in part by tidal forces from Saturn and another moon, Dione,   
   with seafloor vents expelling water at at least 194 degrees Fahrenheit. Plumes   
   of water vapor and icy particles jettison from its surface in geyser-like   
   spouts, hinting that there is much more to this snowy moonscape than meets the   
   eye.   
       
   Cassini will be soaring through the jets located at the moon's south pole,   
   only 30 miles above the surface.   
       
   "Although the October 28th flyby won't be the closest we've ever been to   
   Enceladus, it is the closest flyby over the south pole and through the plume,"   
   says Linda Spilker, the Cassini Project Scientist at the Jet Propulsion   
   Laboratory. "We'll be exploring in situ a region of the plume that Cassini has   
   never sampled before. This is very exciting for me!"   
       
   So what causes these plumes, and why are they so important? Enceladus' vast,   
   subterranean oceans may be fizzy and full of gas. When the gas and icy   
   particles rise to the surface, they are expelled in plumes shooting from the   
   "tiger stripes." In the words of Linda Spilker, the process is similar to   
   "shaking up a bottle of soda; the gas has nowhere to go but up and out."   
       
   However, the plumes are more than just gas and water: samples show that they   
   also contain many of the building blocks essential to Earth-like life. This   
   lends itself to the exciting possibility that organisms similar to those that   
   thrive in our own deep oceans near volcanic vents exuding carbon dioxide and   
   hydrogen sulfide might exist on Eceladus. Although it is still too early to   
   know exactly how complex potential Enceladus' lifeforms could be, scientists   
   speculate that at the very least microbial life is a real possibility.   
       
   In the future, a different spacecraft may journey across the solar system to   
   visit icy Enceladus. This spacecraft, unlike Cassini, could be designed to   
   land on Enceladus' surface, near one of its "tiger stripes." Such a lander   
   would be able to take samples more directly, bypassing the plume altogether.   
       
   "Ideally, it could take samples from the edge of one of the tiger stripes,"   
   speculates Spilker. This would ensure that any microbes being expelled from   
   Enceladus' interior would be more plentiful and easier to collect.   
       
   Until then, flybys are the best we can do. And the next one should be very   
   good indeed. Tune in on Oct. 28th!   
       
   Credits:   
       
   Author: Ferris Molina | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- DB 3.99 + Windows 10   
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