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Podcast: StarDate
Episode: Moon and Saturn
Description: Not many planetary spacecraft get to shower off. But the Cassini spacecraft did – more than once. It flew through plumes of ice and water vapor from Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. The encounters helped scientists confirm that an ocean hides below the moon’s icy crust.
Enceladus is a little more than 300 miles in diameter – roughly the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Its surface is completely coated with ice. That makes it the most reflective large body in the solar system, so it looks bright white.
Much of that ice comes from more than a...