Enceladus, Saturn's strange moon with its icy geysers, had its last flyby from the Cassini deep space probe in late December 2015. Passing only three thousand kilometers from the surface, NASA's Cassini prepares for the final leg of its journey when it will plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn in 2017.
Cassini project director Earl Maize described it as "an incredible decade of investigating one of the most intriguing bodies in the solar system." Among the many amazing discoveries that probe made was the existence of enormous geysers at the southern pole of Enceladus twelve years ago, a discovery that prompted changes in the mission profile and the question - does this tiny moon hide life in its subsarface oceans? Only time and further exploration will tell.
image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute