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Earlier this week NASA’s Cassini spacecraft started sending some of the most detailed and fascinating pictures home of Saturn’s sixth largest moon. Cassini recently began a two year extension of it’s original tour of our solar system’s ringed planet by taking a closer look at Enceladus. We know that Enceladus is almost entirely water ice, but many are hoping to find something more along the lines of the building blocks of life. Watch on to learn more about Cassini and see some great pics of Enceladus!

Earlier this week NASA’s Cassini spacecraft started sending some of the most detailed and fascinating pictures home of Saturn’s sixth largest moon. In a truly global effort, the mission itself is a joint project between the ESA, the Italian Space Agency and NASA. Not to mention that the signals were originally picked up by the Deep Space Network station in Australia, and from there, relayed to mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California.

Cassini recently began a two year extension of it’s original tour of our solar system’s ringed planet by taking a closer look at Enceladus. On the moon’s south pole there is an area with so-called “tiger stripes” on the surface. Earlier inspection had revealed that these stripes seem to be the source of the moon’s crazy old-faithful like eruptions and a near some 100 degree Celsius temperature difference than at it’s poles. Scientists have been fascinated with these geysers since their 2005 discovery. The general debate being whether or not there may be an internal ocean of water under the surface of the tiny 310 mile wide moon. The Earth’s moon by comparison is about seven times larger. So, the ever brave Cassini made a flyby pass about 30 miles away from the surface and traveling a mere 40,000 miles per hour.

We know that Enceladus is almost entirely water ice, but many are hoping to find something more along the lines of the building blocks of life. The Cassini teams will be analyzing all of the information we are now receiving for the next few days and weeks, while Cassini can start to prepare for two more flybys in October just 16 miles from the surface.

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