{"id":6554,"date":"2015-11-03T07:49:27","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T07:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=6554"},"modified":"2015-11-03T07:49:27","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T07:49:27","slug":"sampling-the-ocean-on-enceladus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/sampling-the-ocean-on-enceladus\/","title":{"rendered":"Sampling the ocean on Enceladus"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/Space<\/a>
NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/Space Science Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Description<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Cassini spacecraft captured\u00a0this view\u00a0of Saturn\u2019s icy moon Enceladus as it approached for its closest-ever flyby of the moon’s active south polar region.<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]Scientists will use the new information gathered during this dive through the plume to gain insights about how habitable the ocean environment may be for simple forms of life, and to study the chemistry and composition of the plume.[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

The spacecraft flew about 49 km above the surface through the towering plumes of ice, water vapour and organic molecules spraying from that region. Previous flybys have\u00a0sampled the plume\u00a0but the low altitude of this close encounter was devised partly to provide greater sensitivity to heavier, more massive molecules, including organics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Studies with Cassini have shown that beneath the moon\u2019s icy exterior lies a\u00a0global ocean\u00a0heated in part by tidal forces from\u00a0Saturn and its moon Dione.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scientists will use the new information gathered during this dive through the plume to gain insights about how habitable the ocean environment may be for simple forms of life, and to study the chemistry and composition of the plume.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this view of the moon, the heavily cratered northern latitudes at the top transition to fractured, wrinkled terrain in the middle and southern latitudes. The wavy boundary of the moon\u2019s active south polar region \u2013 Cassini’s destination for this flyby \u2013 is visible at the bottom, where it disappears into wintry darkness.<\/span><\/p>\n

This image of the Saturn-facing side of the moon was taken with the narrow-angle camera on 28 October 2015 when Cassini was at a distance of some 96\u00a0000 km from Enceladus. The image scale is 578 m per pixel.<\/span><\/p>\n

More images from the \u2018plume dive\u2019 can be viewed on the\u00a0JPL website.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cassini\u2013Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency. NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission for NASA.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cassini spacecraft captured the view of Saturn\u2019s icy moon Enceladus as it approached for its closest-ever flyby of the moon’s active south polar region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,700,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,700,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,700,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,700,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,700,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,700,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",570,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,600,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,600,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",490,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",360,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",65,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",640,640,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",96,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sampling_the_ocean_on_Enceladus_node_full_image_2.jpg",150,150,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}