Saturn's moon Enceladus got a closer visit from NASA's Cassini probe on Wednesday when the spacecraft made a dive toward the moon's plume of icy spray.
The 30-mile dive occurred around 1 p.m. EDT, where Cassini took photos and samples of the moon that should help NASA researchers find out more about the moon's capacity to host life, Space reports.
The probe will also measure the amount of molecular hydrogen in the plume - the lightest molecule in the universe - in order for scientists to figure out how much hydrothermal activity occurs on the moon. This can be an indicator of the potential for simple life forms to exist in the moon's ocean, ABC News reports.
While the goal of this deep dive isn't to detect life, the expectation is that it will provide fresh insights about how habitable the ocean environment is within Enceladus, considering the possibility of existence of microscopic organisms like those in Earth's deep sea volcanic vents, based on the moon's hydrothermal activity, according to Fox News.
The flyby will also help solve the mystery of whether the plume is composed of column-like, individual jets, or sinuous, icy curtain eruptions - or a combination of both - making it clearer as to how material is getting to the surface from the ocean below, according to NASA.
An online toolkit for all three final Enceladus flybys is available at NASA Flyby Page.
