NASA Examines Saturn’s Moon in Flyby for Clues
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Washington — A close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus tomorrow by the Cassini spacecraft may yield clues about how icy eruptions and tectonic activity shape its surface, NASA said.
Instruments aboard the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Cassini probe will capture infrared and ultraviolet images of the moon’s surface to examine fissures that run along the south pole, the agency said in a statement.
Jets of icy water vapor shoot hundreds of miles into space from the fissures that NASA says look like tiger stripes. Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of the ringed planet, was found to have a “significant atmosphere” when examined by Cassini in 2005, indicating it may contain an underground source of gases.
The probe will pass by only 30 miles from the moon’s surface tomorrow as the sensors seek to measure the size of the ice grains and determine the elements in the ice such as oxygen, hydrogen, or organic compounds, NASA said.
