Starting today, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will begin a series of three close encounters with Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Images from the flyby are expected to begin arriving two days later, providing the first close-up view of the moon’s north polar region.

Since Cassini’s 2005 discovery of continually-erupting fountains of icy material on Enceladus, the Saturn moon has become one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for present-day habitable environments. Mission scientists announced evidence in March that hydrothermal activity may be occurring on the seafloor of the moon’s underground ocean. In September they broke news that its ocean — previously thought to be only a regional sea — was, in fact, global.

Read the full NASA press release at: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/cassini-begins-series-of-flybys-with-close-up-of-saturn-moon-enceladus