I know it sounds like the title from a children’s book about a young lad named Cassini who has to run through the magical hair-gardens of the kingdom of Enceladus, but it’s way cooler than that.

On November 2, the Cassini spacecraft successfully flew through that really cool¬†plume of what is currently thought to be “water vapor, sodium, and organic materials” from previous flybys. While it was doing so, it was relaying information back to the NASA scientists involved in the project who are now knee deep in new information about this incredibly interesting moon of Saturn. They took some distant pictures capturing some incredible photos of the planet from afar, but also flew about 100 kilometers above the surface, all the while snapping pictures and analyzing the surface of the planet with VIMS, their Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer. There’s great information up giving a higher level view of the findings at ScienceDaily, and a really great description with more detail on NASA’s page written by Bonnie J. Buratti, one of the scientists involved in interpreting the data.

In case you aren’t familiar, Enceladus is the sixth biggest of Saturn’s 61 moons. There’s lots of info about it on it’s wiki pageif you’re curious. It is hoped that, much like the recent discovery of water ice on the moon, Enceladus may well have potential for use as a refilling station. Speaking as one who knows nothing of the mechanics of things, I understand that one of our major barriers to travel outside the boundaries of our world is water. A manned trip to another planet would require a lot of water for many everyday activities, and that leaves us needing to pack enough water for the trip there and back. Obviously, if we can find water elsewhere, it may well offer us the opportunity to use those places as refueling stations.

As well, the presence of water may well open up the opportunity to find life on the planet. This need not necessarily be cool Saturnians with claw hands and telepathic powers plotting an all-out war on earth, but might simply be the sort of insignificant single-celled creatures that wound up giving us an environment when we needed it. At any event, there is much to imagine, learn, and dream about coming from this project.

Jim