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 LOS ANGELES (AP) - Three years after gigantic geysers were spied on an icy Saturn moon, the international Cassini spacecraft is poised to plunge through the fringes of the mysterious plumes to learn how they formed.
Wednesday's flyby will take Cassini within 30 miles of the surface of Enceladus at closest approach. The unmanned probe will be about 120 miles above the moon as it sweeps through the edge of the geysers and measures their chemical makeup.
The carefully orchestrated event will take Cassini "deeper than we've been before," mission scientist Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute said in an e-mail.
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