On the heels of the discovery that there is liquid water spraying from the moon’s south pole, NASA’s Cassini probe detected a global ocean under the icy surface of Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn, on Sept. 15, 2015. The probe did not land on the moon, but has been orbiting around it since 2004. After analyzing years of photographs of the moon’s surface (using craters as landmarks) a SETI Institute team of scientists noticed a tiny but consistent wobble in the moon’s orbit, meaning the ocean that had previously been detected should cover the whole planet.
“If the surface and core were rigidly connected, the core would provide so much dead weight the wobble would be far smaller than we observe it to be,” said Matthew Tiscareno, co-author of the paper and a member of the Cassini research team at the SETI Institute. “This proves that there must be a global layer of liquid separating the surface from the core.”
Enceladus has been one of the most popular bodies in our solar system. The jets of icy water coming from its south pole were discovered in 2005, and confirmations of regional oceans, geothermal activity, and organic molecules came in 2014 and 2015.
The discovery of a global ocean, with underwater geothermal activity, makes Enceladus one of the most likely places in our Solar System for life to develop. While the planet’s icy exterior reflects too much light for photosynthesis to take place, scientists are not ruling out the possibility of life existing without sunlight.
“There are definitely regions on Enceladus where the conditions are such that life could exist,” said Nikolai Brilliantov of Leicester University. “You have liquid water, you have chemicals and you have heat. And that is enough for life. To my mind, this is the best place we can expect to find life elsewhere in the solar system. Even here on Earth, we have organisms known as ‘extremophiles’ that survive in the ocean at levels deeper than light can penetrate, so the process is certainly possible.”
NASA currently has plans to dispatch a probe to Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons) with the hopes of finding extraterrestrial life. Additionally, a second probe to Enceladus is being considered for launch within the next decade. Cassini was not designed to test for life, so a second mission, currently called the Enceladus Life Finder probe (ELF) has been submitted to NASA. The ELF would not be able to drill through the thick ice layer, but would land near the moon’s south pole and analyze the content spraying from the geysers.
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