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Phoenix666 writes:

On Wednesday morning, NASA's Cassini space probe will whiz by Enceladus, making its second-to-last passage of the icy moon—and its most valuable yet. The spacecraft has already flown by Enceladus 20 times, not to mention making observations of Saturn and its other satellites over the last 11 years. But tomorrow's flyby will take Cassini within 30 miles of the surface, and straight through its mysterious geysers, which are fueled by a subsurface ocean that could potentially harbor life.

Speeding along at 19,000 mph, the probe will hurtle through the geyser's plumes around 1 pm Eastern time, furiously capturing samples and images in an attempt to characterize the moon's internal ocean. Those measurements will tell NASA's scientists more about the hydrothermal reactions and organic molecules under the moon's icy surface. "It'll be over in an instant," says Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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