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Image: Slim crescent of Enceladus

The low angle of sunlight along the slim crescent of Saturn's moon Enceladus (313 miles or 504 kilometers across) highlights the many fractures and furrows on its icy surface.

Image: North pole of Enceladus

In the north, Enceladus' surface appears to be about as old as any in the solar system. The south, however, is an entirely different story.

Saturn spacecraft toting CU Boulder instrument starts swan song

Toting a $12 million instrument built by the University of Colorado Boulder, NASA's Cassini spacecraft made the first of 22 dives between the rings of Saturn and the gaseous planet today, the beginning of the end for one ...

Cassini mission revealed Saturn's secrets

Cassini is the most sophisticated space probe ever built. Launched in 1997 as a joint NASA/European Space Agency mission, it took seven years to journey to Saturn. It's been orbiting the sixth planet from the sun ever since, ...

Enceladus' south pole is warm under the frost

Over the past decade, the international Cassini mission has revealed intense activity at the southern pole of Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, with warm fractures venting water-rich jets that hint at an underground sea. A new ...

Video: Supersonic gas jets blast off

Supersonic gas jets sound like science fiction, but they are actually found throughout our solar system: for example, fast jets of sulfur dioxide stream from the surface of Jupiter's moon Io and water vapor sprays from the ...

Image: Potentially hospitable Enceladus

Seen from outside, Enceladus appears to be like most of its sibling moons: cold, icy and inhospitable. But under that forbidding exterior may exist the very conditions needed for life.

Image: Enceladus and its paper-thin crust

Of all the icy moons in the Solar System, Saturn's moon Enceladus is probably the 'hottest' when measured for its potential to host life. Despite its distance from Earth, it may also be the easiest to investigate.

An ocean lies a few kilometers beneath Enceladus's icy surface

With eruptions of ice and water vapor, and an ocean covered by an ice shell, Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the most fascinating in the Solar System, especially as interpretations of data provided by the Cassini spacecraft ...

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