NASA Cassini Spacecraft Buzzes Saturn's Moon Titan's Methane Lake

NASA's Cassini probe zipped by Saturn's largest moon Titan on Tuesday (July 24) in a close flyby to search for a lake filled with liquid methane.

The Cassini spacecraft flew within 629 miles (1,012 kilometers) of Titan during the flyby in order to "look for a glint of sunlight reflecting off a methane lake," mission managers wrote in a statement.

Scientists have dubbed the liquid methane lake Kivu Lacus. It is one of the small northern lakes on Titan and Cassini mission scientists hoped to use the spacecraft's visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (or VIMS) to glean new details about the lake by analyzing its reflected light.