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International Mission Finds Potential Water on Saturn Moon

09 March 2006

Liquid water could make Enceladus "suitable for living organisms"

Washington – NASA's Cassini spacecraft might have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon, according to a March 9 NASA press release.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, the Italian space agency.

"We realize that this is a radical conclusion – that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Colorado.

But if the scientists are right, she added, “we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."

High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed.

Scientists examined several models to explain the process, ruling out that the particles could be produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas.

Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility – the jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above zero degrees Celsius.

Before Cassini, scientists knew of only three places where active volcanism exists – Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton.

“Cassini changed all that,” said Cassini scientist John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, “making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system."

Other moons in the solar system have oceans of liquid water covered over by kilometers of icy crust.

"What's different here,” said Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, “is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface."

Scientists now know that Enceladus is spewing out water molecules that break down into oxygen and hydrogen, but they still have many questions – Why is Enceladus so active? Are other sites on the moon active? Might this activity have been continuous enough over the moon's history for life to have had a chance to take hold in the moon's interior?

In 2008, scientists will have another chance to look at Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers of the moon.

Cassini images and information are available at the NASA  and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Web sites.  The full text of NASA’s March 9 press release is also available on the agency’s Web site.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)