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

Pictures available later

[sighted]

I should add that although the closest approach to Enceladus is happening as I type this, Cassini won't have a chance to turn its antenna toward Earth until later this evening (U.S. time). The downlink will take several hours, so the first pictures probably won't be publicly available until tomorrow.

Re:It really has the sensors for this?

[rijrunner]

    The probe was going to be flying around the rings of Saturn, so they added the Cosmic Dust Analyzer, which can analyze dust particles. For the type of thing they are doing here, they can treat water as a dust particle as it will freeze. It is particulate matter.

*Tops* of the Plumes!?

[CheshireCatCO]

The spacecraft is flying 200 km from the south pole of Enceladus. The plume extends *thousands* of kilometers into space. We're not passing through the top of the plume by any means. We're getting right into it.

Re:Where's Google...?

[icebrain]

Yes, it has thrusters. Midcourse corrections happen every now and then.

It's not so much that orbital mechanics is hard; a lot of it is just brute-force computation. The hard part is getting reliable data to base said computation on.