Enceladus is a prime target in the search for life in the Solar System, identified by NASA as the second-highest priority site for a flagship mission in the next decade.
During its 20-year mission, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft discovered that ice plumes spew from Enceladus’ surface at approximately 400 m/s (800 mph).
These plumes provide an excellent opportunity to collect samples and study the composition of Enceladus’ oceans and potential habitability.
However, until now it was not known if the speed of the plumes would fragment any organic compounds contained within the ice grains, thus degrading the samples.
In new research, scientists at the University of California San Diego found laboratory evidence that amino acids — an important class of biosignature molecules — transported in these ice plumes can survive impact speeds of up to 4.2 km/s (2.6 miles per second), supporting their detection during sampling by spacecraft.
Beginning in 2012, they custom-built a unique aerosol impact spectrometer, designed to study collision dynamics of single aerosols and particles at high velocities.
Although not built specifically to study ice grain impacts, it turned out to be exactly the right machine to do so.
“This apparatus is the only one of its kind in the world that can select single particles and accelerate or decelerate them to chosen final velocities,” said University of California San Diego’s Professor Robert Continetti, senior author of the study.
“From several micron diameters down to hundreds of nanometers, in a variety of materials, we’re able to examine particle behavior, such as how they scatter or how their structures change upon impact.”
In 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper, which will travel to Jupiter.
Europa, one of Jupiter’s largest moons, is another ocean world, and has a similar icy composition to Enceladus.
There is hope that the Clipper or any future probes to Saturn will be able to identify a specific series of…
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