Enceladus tagged posts

Enceladus’ subsurface ocean composition hints at habitable conditions. A Southwest Research Institute team developed a new geochemical model that reveals that carbon dioxide (CO2) from within Enceladus, an ocean-harboring moon of Saturn, may be controlled by chemical reactions at its seafloor...

Slashed across the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus are four straight, parallel fissures or ‘tiger stripes’ from which water erupts. These fissures aren’t quite like anything else in the Solar System. Researchers now think they have a model to explain them.

Saturn’s tiny, frozen moon Enceladus is a strange place. Just 300 miles across, the moon is thought to have an outer shell of ice covering a global ocean 20 miles deep, encasing a rocky core...

Cassini discovered complex organic molecules erupting from Enceladus into space. Southwest Research Institute scientists think hydrothermal processes in the moon’s rocky core could synthesize organics from inorganic precursors. Alternatively, these processes could be transforming preexisting organics by heating, or they could generate geochemical conditions in the ocean of Enceladus that would allow possible forms of alien life to synthesize biological molecules. Credit: Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/LPG-CNRS/Nantes-Angers/ESA

Discovery indicates Saturn’s moon meets critical requirements for life...

Plumes water ice and vapor spray from many locations near the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as documented by the Cassini-Huygens mission. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Engineers explore ways to sample and identify living microbes in the outer solar system. Digital holographic microscopy, which uses lasers to record 3D images, may be our best bet for spotting extraterrestrial microbes. No probe since NASA’s Viking program in the late 1970s has explicitly searched for extraterrestrial life – that is, for actual living organisms. Rather, the focus has been on finding water. Enceladus has a lot of water – an ocean’s worth, hidden beneath an icy shell that coats the entire surface...