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    Signs of Life would be Detectable in Single Ice Grain Emitted from Extraterrestrial Moons

    March 26, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    cartoon of icy moon with ocean interior covered with thin yellow stripe
    The drawing on the left depicts Enceladus and its ice-covered ocean, with cracks near the south pole that are believed to penetrate through the icy crust. The middle panel shows where authors believe life could thrive: at the top of the water, in a proposed thin layer (shown yellow) like on Earth’s oceans. The right panel shows that as gas bubbles rise and pop, bacterial cells could get lofted into space with droplets that then become the ice grains that were detected by Cassini.European Space Agency

    Could life be found in frozen sea spray from moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter? New research finds that life can be detected in a single ice grain containing one bacterial cell or portions of a cell...

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    Ice Shell Thickness reveals Water Temperature on Ocean Worlds

    March 3, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Encedalus
    The frozen ocean world of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

    Cornell University astrobiologists have devised a novel way to determine ocean temperatures of distant worlds based on the thickness of their ice shells, effectively conducting oceanography from space.

    Available data showing ice thickness variation already allows a prediction for the upper ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, and a NASA mission’s planned orbital survey of Europa’s ice shell should do the same for the much larger Jovian moon, enhancing the mission’s findings about whether it could support life.

    The researchers propose that a process called “ice pumping,” which they’ve observed below Antarctic ice shelves, likely shapes the undersides of Europa’s and Enceladus’ ice shells, but should also operate at Ganymede a...

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    Mimas’ surprise: Tiny Moon holds Young Ocean beneath Icy Shell

    February 9, 2024, Categories  Uncategorized

    Mimas' surprise: Tiny moon holds young ocean beneath icy shell
    Mimas measurements and ocean models. The amplitude of libration in longitude ϕs and periapsis drift variation Δϖ for different internal structure models with an ocean. The colors represent the thickness of the ice crust hs. The gray areas correspond to the measured libration amplitude and perihelion longitude variation. The dispersion represents sensitivity to the crustal polar and equatorial flattenings (see additional tests in Methods). Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06975-9

    Hidden beneath the heavily cratered surface of Mimas, one of Saturn’s smallest moons lies a secret: a global ocean of liquid water. This astonishing discovery, led by Dr...

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    Webb Telescope finds Towering Plume of Water escaping from one of Saturn’s Moons

    May 30, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Courtesy of NASA/ESA/CSA/Alyssa Pagan (STScI)/Geronimo Villanueva (NASA-GSFC) SwRI contributed to new Cycle 1 JWST findings that show the plume of water escaping from Saturn’s moon Enceladus extends 6,000 miles or more than 40 times the moon’s size. In light of this discovery, SwRI’s Dr. Christopher Glein was awarded a NASA JWST Cycle 2 allocation to study the plume as well as the icy surface of Enceladus, to better understand the potential habitability of this ocean world.

    Two Southwest Research Institute scientists were part of a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team that observed a towering plume of water vapor more than 6,000 miles long—roughly the distance from the U.S. to Japan—spewing from the surface of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus...

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