WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- NASA says its Messenger spacecraft has made its third and final flyby of Mercury, providing, for the first time, a nearly complete view of the planet.
NASA spacecraft views more of Mercury »
Cassini makes another Enceladus flyby »
PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- NASA says its Cassini spacecraft has successfully completed another flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus and is sending data from the event back to Earth.
Water Geysers on Saturn Moon Take Center Stage »
New striking photos of water-vapor geysers shooting off of Saturn's moon Enceladus were taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in orbit around the planet.
similar items Cassini dances with Enceladus once again »
Today (as I write this), the Cassini spacecraft passed just a hair under 100 km (62 miles) from the surface of Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn. This little moon is scientifically incredibly interesting; there are geysers at the south pole that are spewing out water! The images are just now coming in, and have not been calibrated or processed yet, but they are still breathtaking. I particularly like this one:
[Click to embiggen, as usual.]
That, me droogs, is high art. Enceladus was about 190,000 km (118,000 miles) away from Cassini when that shot was taken, a little under half the distance of the Earth to the Moon. From this angle, Enceladus is lit in a gorgeous thin crescent, but we can see detail on the dark side, I suspect due to light reflecting off Saturn onto the moon. You can see ridges in the surface; the moon has a thick crust of ice presumably floating on an undersurface ocean of water (though there have been arguments about that), so the surface is a bit of a mess, looking for all the world(s) like ice floes seen at our own north pole.
The geysers are obvious too, blasts of light at the top of the moon’s limb as the water erupting from the south pole is lit by the Sun. Thumbing through the raw images is a delight (once there, set the target for Enceladus, choose both narrow and wide angle, and put in dates of October 30 through November 3 to narrow the search). You’ll see dramatic images of the moon, its limb, the geysers, and everything.
Stunning, and wondrous. And there’s better to come: as Carolyn Porco herself mentions on Twitter, the primary purpose of this flyby was not to get images; November 21st is the imaging flyby where we’ll see lots of spectacular shots of the moon. So stay tuned!
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
