Enceladus, the sixth-biggest moon of Saturn, presents a remarkable opportunity in our Solar System for searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life, given its habitable ocean and plume that deposits organic-bearing ocean material onto the surface. Organic ocean material could be sampled by a lander mission at Enceladus. It is of interest to understand the amount of relatively pristine, unaltered organics present on the surface, given the ultraviolet and plasma environment.
“We can learn a lot about potential biosignatures in Enceladus’ ocean by sending a mission to the surface of Enceladus,” said Planetary Science Institute senior scientist Amanda Hendrix.
“Previously, it was thought that in order to sample the freshest material from the Enceladus ocean, you have to fly through the plume and measure plume grains and gases.”
“But now we know that you can land on the surface and be confident that your instruments can measure relatively pristine plume organics — sourced from the ocean.”
“We know that Enceladus’ ocean is habitable thanks to the measurements from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft,” she added.
“We know there is liquid water, energy, and the chemicals carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. These are the ingredients necessary for life as we know it.”
“Enceladus is an ocean world: it harbors a liquid ocean below an icy surface.”
“There are at least several ocean worlds in our Solar System, but Enceladus is special because it is spraying its ocean material out into space via its south polar vapor-and-ice grain plume, which means that the instruments on Cassini were able to characterize the ocean as the spacecraft flew by and through the Enceladus plume.”
“Luckily, for this study, even though some of the plume grains are ejected out into the Saturnian system, close to 90% of the plume grains fall back onto the surface of the moon, which likely means that ocean material — including organics — is…
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