Spacecraft to Fly Through Geyser Plumes On Saturn Moon

Riding with Robots writes "Today the robotic Saturn probe Cassini will make its closest buzz ever over the surface of the enigmatic ice moon Enceladus, whose surprising giant water geysers hint at a hidden ocean of liquid water. The spacecraft will fly right through the tops of the geyser plumes in order to sample the material that originated beneath the surface. NASA is offering a video, interactive guide and image gallery in advance of the event."

Comments

Re:Pictures available later

[Hatta]

Mmmm enchiladas. Wait what?

Been there, done that

[garett_spencley]

I already sampled the water from the geysers on Enceladus back in '78 at a Greatful Dead concert.

Tasted kind of sweet with a hint of mint.

NASA needs to get with the times. They've got 30 years of catching up to do.

Re:Do they have windshield wipers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, but wipers alone would not be sufficient to get the sticky bug guts off the lens. They'd need some pretty heavy duty washer fluid too.

Weight restrictions and tradeoffs

[StefanJ]

Well, the initial plans called for wipers, but that would have required another .4 kg of expensive plutonium pellets in the RTG, and the added mass of the motor, intermittent-wipe controller, and the mechanism for changing spare wiper blades would have meant that the hermetically sealed capsule containing the Blob (frozen by Steve McQueen in the 1950s) would have been bumped to another deep-space probe.

yay for space diseases!

[Satanboy]

Maybe it will find something like the andromeda strain.

Now, that would be something.

good ol days

[ezwip]

I remember the good old days when they'd tell you to rewrite your book report for talking about water in space.

Oblig...

[BenSchuarmer]

That's no moon!

Obligatory?

[spun]

You all keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

ALL THESE WORLDS.....

[up2ng]

All These Planets Are Yours Except Europa, Attempt No Landing There ...

I know it's not Jupiter