With a global ocean of liquid water below a thick crust of ice, Saturn’s moon Enceladus is one of the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth. A new study suggests the moon itself may aid in that search by making some ocean compounds easier for future spacecraft to detect.
At the moon’s south pole, jets of water vapor and tiny ice particles erupt from Enceladus’s ocean and extend hundreds of miles into space to feed Saturn’s E ring. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which arrived at Saturn in 2004, repeatedly flew through this plume, allowing it to sample ocean-derived material without landing or drilling through miles of ice. Cassini detected salts and organic compounds, as well as evidence of water-rock interactions occurring on the moon’s rocky seafloor.
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