Last Wednesday, the Cassini spacecraft whizzed through a giant geyser bursting from the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn's tiny moons. Cassini’s cameras were poised to take new pictures of Enceladus, and an onboard tool was supposed to analyze the composition of the geyser.
Those Enceladan outbursts, hundreds of miles tall, are curious beasts. Scientists suspect they contain ice and rocky debris, but how such a small and cold body can host these powerful plumes remains a mystery. Is there a watery ocean trapped under the frozen surface? Where does all this energy come from? To add mystery to mystery, last month, we learned that Saturn’s outermost ring actually sops up debris from the geysers.
Well, at least Cassini’s camera worked! (The image above is from NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.) And so did four of the other devices. The new pictures deliver new details on the polar regions of the moon, which is only about 310 miles in diameter. But we’ll have to wait a few months for an inside look at the geysers.
Just before the spacecraft passed through the plume, at a stunning 32,000 miles per hour, the Cosmic Dust Analyzer blinked off. The blackout couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the device went offline just long enough to completely miss the flyby. Completely. The scientists are still trying to figure out what caused the glitch, but the analyzer seems to be working fine now.
Not to worry: The dicey analyzer will get a second chance. Cassini is scheduled to pass by Enceladus four more times this year.
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