Cassini to cross Saturn moon water plume

Washington -- The U.S. space agency plans to send its Cassini spacecraft through a water plume erupting from a geyser on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the spacecraft will skirt the edge of a huge geyser erupting from giant fractures on the south pole of Enceladus. Cassini will sample water-ice, dust and gas in the plume.

The source of such geysers is of great interest to scientists who theorize liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, might exist in the area. While flying through the edge of the plumes, Cassini will be approximately 120 miles from the moon's surface during the Wednesday experiment. At its closest approach to Enceladus, Cassini will be 30 miles from the surface.

"There are two types of particles coming from Enceladus, one pure water-ice, the other water-ice mixed with other stuff," said Sascha Kempf, deputy principal investigator for Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. "We think the clean water-ice particles are being bounced off the surface and the dirty water-ice particles are coming from inside the moon. This flyby will show us whether this concept is right or wrong."

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.