Cassini Completes Close Enceladus Flyby Mission

The Cassini spacecraft has begun channeling images and data from mission's last close flyby of Saturn's active moon Enceladus, according to a NASA report. On Dec 19, Cassini passed by Enceladus at a distance of 3,106 miles (4,999 kilometers).

"This final Enceladus flyby elicits feelings of both sadness and triumph," Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL, said in a news release. "While we're sad to have the close flybys behind us, we've placed the capstone on an incredible decade of investigating one of the most intriguing bodies in the solar system."

During this mission, Cassini will continue monitor activities on Enceladus from a distance until the end of the mission in Sept 2017. Cassini's potential future encounters with Enceladus will be from a much further distance, over four times farther than its latest encounter.

This is Cassini's 22^nd encounter with Saturn's moon Enceladus. Cassini's discovery of geologic activity on Enceladus, not long after it arrived on Saturn prompted changes to the mission's flight,which extended the number and quality of flybys of the icy moon.

"We bid a poignant goodbye to our close views of this amazing icy world," said Linda Spilker, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "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?'"

After detecting a number of geological activity Enceladus, scientists announced that there was strong evidence for a regional subsurface sea and it is possible that the moon has a global ocean under its icy crust.

Related Articles 

Water On Mars: Martian Gullies Contain 'No Water' Study Reveals

Giant Comets Threaten Life On Earth, Astronomers Reveal New Findings

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).