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The frozen moon is one of the most promising places for extraterrestrial life
We're not saying there's life on Enceladus... but there *could be* life on Enceladus.
Saturn's moon Enceladus features ice tectonics and subsurface liquid water.
New research reveals the physics governing the fissures through which ocean water erupts from the moon's icy surface.
This small moon has huge potential.
This would allow us to gain a new understanding of extraterrestrial life.
The findings could have important consequences for the prospect of finding alien life there.
A few years ago, the Cassini spacecraft made a surprising discovery: there are geysers erupting on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, spewing water and ice to great heights. However, the process which causes these geysers remained unknown or controversial. Now, scientists at the University of Chicago and Princeton University have pinpointed a mechanism through which Saturn’s tidal forces […]
NASA is preparing for a historical approach to Enceladus, plunging its Cassini spacecraft deep through the icy spray coming from the ocean on Enceladus.
Saturn's moon, Enceladus, is covered in a thick icy crust, but beneath it might lie an ocean of liquid water despite there are minus 201 degrees Celsius on the surface. This is a theoretical assumption, which is however backed by very solid indirect evidence. Gushing plums of water from the moon's south pole also point to this conclusion. If this is true, Enceladus can be envisioned like a gourmet candy: a hot core (maybe chocolate?), surrounded by a layer or water, and all covered in a crunchy crust of ice.
The geysers on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus have been counted and mapped, strengthening theories that Enceladus is one of the best extraterrestrial places in our solar system to look for life. Earth is not the only place in our solar system which holds water. For example, Enceladus also has liquid oceans – albeit […]
The new NASA-funded study showed that if the icy surface of Pluto’s giant moon Charon is cracked, analyzing the fractures could show if the interior was warm and perhaps warm enough to have maintained a subterranean ocean of liquid water. Pluto is the most distant planetoid (no longer a planet, sorry) in the solar system. […]
Earth is not the only place in the solar system to hold watery oceans: Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons also holds a liquid ocean, albeit one that is covered by ice. However, Enceladus is still an extremely exciting place to find extraterrestrial life – not only because of the water it holds, but because water […]
Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have enabled scientists for the first time to create a correlation between spraying of jets of water vapor from fissures on Saturn’s moon Enceladus with Saturn’s gravity and the way it creates stress on the fissure. “This new work gives scientists insight into the mechanics of these picturesque jets at […]
As the winter ski season is rapidly approaching, snow sports enthusiasts all over the world are already planing their trips, on a quest to find the most intense slop. Skiers need not to look farther, as Cassini scientists have announced that the probe has transmitted data which suggests Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon, is coated by […]
For the past 14 years, astronomers have been scratching their heads trying to find out just where does the water in Saturn’s upper atmosphere comes from; now, ESA’s Herschel space observatory has solved that mystery – the water is expelled from Enceladus, one of the planet’s moons. Enceladus is eliminating about 250 kilograms of water […]
Launched in 1997 on a mission to study Saturn and its satellites, the Casisni spacecraft reached the system in 2004. Since then it has provided numerous invaluable scientific findings regarding the second largest planet in our solar system, and other important scientific findings alike. One such finding was detailed in a recently published study, which […]
It’s been quite a while since we published anything about the Cassini mission, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been active. The information it keeps sending back to Earth is priceless, and at some points, totally surprising. This was also the case of the Saturn Moon Enceladus, which appears to give out much more heat […]
The Cassini spacecraft has made numerous valuable discoveries along the time, such as the ‘building blocks’ of life on Titan, as well as the mountains there, and the partial rings of Saturn, and now scientists eagerly await the dive of the probe into the water plum of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. This will be […]
