The Cassini spacecraft has discovered intriguing dust particles
around Saturn's moon Enceladus. The particles might indicate the
existence of a dust cloud around Enceladus, or they may have
originated from Saturn's outermost ring, the E-ring.
"We are making measurements in the plane of the E-ring,†said Dr.
Thanasis Economou, a senior scientist at the University of
Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute. Economou is the lead
researcher on the high rate detector, part of a larger instrument
on Cassini called the cosmic dust analyzer. "It will take a few
more flybys to distinguish if the dust flux is originating from
the E-ring as opposed to a source at Enceladus."
Enceladus is rapidly becoming a very interesting target for
Cassini. So much so that scientists and engineers are planning
to revise the altitude of the next flyby to get a closer look.
Additional Cassini encounters with Enceladus are scheduled for
July 14, 2005, and March 12, 2008. The July 14 flyby was to be
at an altitude of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), but the mission
team now plans to lower that altitude to about 175 kilometers
(109 miles). This will be Cassini's lowest-altitude flyby of any
object during its nominal four-year tour. I think Enceladus is the most incredable looking moon in the saturnian system, the photographs from 109 miles will be somthing to look forward to.
