Cassini transmits data home from Enceladus

The spacecraft has begun sending data back from Saturn's moon.Provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
By | Published: August 13, 2008 | Last updated on May 18, 2023
enceladus
This image is the seventh taken during Cassini’s very close flyby of Enceladus on August 11. (The image is upside down from the skeet-shoot footprint shown here.) The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera, a distance of approximately 2,947 miles (4,742 kilometers) above the surface of Enceladus.
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
August 13, 2008
The Cassini spacecraft began sending data to Earth following a close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on Monday night. During closest approach, Cassini successfully passed only 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the surface of the tiny moon.

Cassini’s signal was picked up by the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia, and relayed to the Cassini mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Closest approach occurred at approximately 3:21 P.M. PDT, while Cassini was traveling at a swift 40,000 miles per hour (17.7 kilometers per second) relative to Enceladus.

enceladus
This is the first image taken during Cassini’s very close flyby of Enceladus on Monday. It captures a region on Enceladus’ south polar terrain that is littered with blocks of ice.
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
During the flyby, Cassini focused its cameras and other remote sensing instruments on Enceladus with an emphasis on the moon’s south pole, where parallel stripes or fissures dubbed “tiger stripes” line the region. That area is of particular interest because geysers of water-ice and vapor jet out of the fissures and supply material to Saturn’s E-ring. Scientists hope to learn more about the fissures and whether liquid water is indeed the engine powering the geysers.

“There is a lot of anticipation and excitement about what today’s flyby might reveal,” says Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist, also of JPL. “Over the next few days and weeks, the Cassini teams will be analyzing the photos and other data to tease out new clues about this tiny, active world.”

Two more Enceladus flybys are planned for October. The first of those will cut Monday’s flyby distance in half and bring the spacecraft to a remarkable 16 miles (25 kilometers) from the surface. Enceladus measures about 310 miles (500 kilometers) in diameter &#8212 just one-seventh the diameter of our Moon.

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