A very close flyby of Saturns's icy moon Enceladus occurred Wed., March 12, 2008.

The fate of the $3.5 Billion mission was in the balance as the bus-sized spacecraft swooped to just 50 km above the surface of Enceladus to sample the frozen spray issuing from liquid water gysers. Water gysers were unexpected because everything else on Enceladus is very much colder than liquid water.

The Cassini-Huygens space probe is an international mission involving the cooperative efforts of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

The probe, launched in 1997, has orbited Saturn since 2004 but has never before flown so close to a moon.