Glimpsing the Structure and Dynamics of the Plume's Evolving Gas Jets with INMS: A Look Back at Cassini's Decade Long Tour of Enceladus

Throughout the Cassini spacecraft's multi-decade tour of Saturn's geologically active icy satellite Enceladus ,the Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) has sampled the gas density and distribution during multiple flyby traversals through the south polar gas/ice plumes: two (E3 and E5) at high (hundreds of km) altitude and five (E7, E14, E17 and E21) at low (90, 66, 66, 41 km) altitude. These measurements, spanning seven years, have enabled changes over time to be observed by INMS. Now that Cassini has concluded its mission, we present our most comprehensive analysis and modeling so far of the plume density and structure from INMS data on all of the flybys, including time variability in the continuous and discrete gas sources and jets along the tiger stripes. We estimate maximum plume water vapor densities of 6, 3 and 6 ×1014 H2O/m3 from INMS data acquired along the E17, E17 and E18 trajectories, respectively. The INMS data are consistent with (1) simultaneous slow isotropic and super-sonic gas emission in the gas jets, and (2) stochastic variability (up to a factor ten) in the source rates and intensities of individual jets. The total plume source rate also appears to vary stochastically between flybys, ranging between 200 and 1000 kg/s, with a systematic variation with Enceladus' orbital position possible (though unconfirmed) in INMS data. Together with Cassini's other instruments [Teolis et al, Astrobiology, in press] these INMS results indicate Enceladus to be a highly active and dynamic ocean world.