Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft takes final flyby of Saturn’s moon

The Cassini space probe made its 22nd pass past the Saturn’s new moon Enceladus for the final time this Saturday.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft may be retreating from Encleadus, an icy moon near the planet Saturn, but scientists shouldn’t help but feel a bittersweet “mission accomplished”. Cassini passed Enceladus at a distance of 3,106 miles (4,999 kilometres) on Saturday, 19 December at 5:49 pm GMT (12:49 pm EST).

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency.

In the final fly-by, the main focus of the probe would be to measure heat coming through the ice from the interior part of the moon. Researchers suspect that these plumes come from a massive ocean that rests below the icy surface of Enceladus.

Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said that his team was experiencing “feelings of both sadness and triumph” in light of that realization. By the time the mission concludes, Cassini will have obtained observations over six years of winter darkness in the moon’s southern hemisphere.

During its final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this view featuring the almost parallel furrows and ridges of the feature named Samarkand Sulci. Jim resides in the San Francisco Bay area and has attended NASA Socials for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover landing and the NASA LADEE lunar orbiter launch.

Scientists believe the plumes stem from a global ocean sealed beneath Enceladus’ icy surface, and that the ocean is in contact with rock, which on Earth, at least, sets the stage for chemistry and environments suitable for life.

“Cassini has made so many breathtaking discoveries about Enceladus, yet so much more remains to be done to answer that pivotal question, ‘Does this tiny ocean world harbor life?'” Spilker said. Cassini’s potential future encounters with Enceladus will be from a much further distance, over four times farther than its latest encounter.

This image from Cassini shows Enceladus’ craggy, dimly lit limb, with the planet Saturn beyond. The New Horizons probe found all kinds of new details about the distant Pluto while the Cassini Spacecraft provided a close look at Saturn’s moons. The spacecraft’s surprising discovery of geologic activity on Enceladus, not long after arriving at Saturn, prompted changes to the mission’s flight plan in order to maximize the number and quality of encounters with the icy moon. “After the first, when we detected the plume, we essentially reshaped the mission around getting as many as we could”.