Enceladus plume density from Cassini spacecraft attitude control data

Abstract The plumes of Enceladus are of interest both as a geophysical phenomenon, and as an astrobiological opportunity for sampling internal material. Here we report measurements of the total mass density (gas plus dust, a combination not reported before except in the engineering literature) deduced from telemetry of Cassini's Attitude and Articulation Control System (AACS), as the spacecraft's thrusters or reaction wheels worked to maintain the desired attitude in the presence of drag torques during close flybys. The drag torque shows good agreement with the water vapor density measured by other instruments during the E5 encounter, but indicates a rather higher mass density on other passes (E3, E14), possibly indicating variations in gas composition and/or gas:dust ratio. The spacecraft appears to have intercepted about 0.2 g of material, on flyby E21 in October 2015 indicating a peak mass density of ∼5.5 × 10 −11  kg m −3 , the highest of all the flybys measured (E3, E5, E7, E9, E14, E21).