NASA confirmed today that one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, may have the right conditions to support life. Thanks to geothermal activity, the small moon may be teaming with aquatic organisms.
A tiny moon, small enough to comfortably rest in the Gulf of Mexico with more than enough leg room has concealed a secret for millennia. Stuck in a tidally-locked orbit around Saturn, NASA announced on Thursday the moon, Enceladus, has most of the building blocks to support life as we know it – two out of 60 moons ain’t bad, right?
It is a common expression to not judge a book by its cover and this little moon could not be a more fitting example as to why. What appears to be a frozen and hospitable wasteland, where on one side dawn never breaks, the horizon could actually be thriving with aquatic life, thanks to warm underground seas.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft first caught a glimpse of Saturn and its rings in early November 2002 and has been closely monitoring the planet and its 60 neighboring satellites ever since. It was only three years later that Cassini spotted evidence of plumes erupting from the Enceladus’ south polar terrain, sending vapor and solid particles hundreds of miles into space.
Due to the finding, NASA directed Casini to plunge through this vapor which collected thousands of particles using instruments such as the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS).
