Saturn's geyser-spewing moon stumps science

0 Comments | USA TODAY, August, 2008 | by Dan Vergano

Frozen iceball or hidden ocean? NASA's Cassini spacecraft has renewed debate among planetary scientists over Saturn's geyser-spewing mystery moon, Enceladus.

Cassini mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have begun unveiling images of a 40,000-mph pass over Enceladus last week. The flyby, which kicks off a two-year extension of the $3.3 billion spacecraft's mission to explore Saturn, passed about 29 miles above the moon's south pole.

"If there is one set of images from this mission that illustrates how skilled we have become as planetary explorers, this is it," says Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Spinning around as it passed overhead to shoot the...