Saturn’s moon Enceladus is blanketed in a thick layer of snow. In some places, the downy stuff would be deep enough to bury nearly any skyscraper on Earth, new research suggests.
“It’s like Buffalo, but worse,” says planetary scientist Emily Martin, referring to the famously snowy city in New York. The snow depth suggests that Enceladus’ dramatic plume of water vapor and other ingredients may have been more active in the past. Martin was part of a team that reported its new findings in the March 1 Icarus.
Planetary scientists have been fascinated by geysers on Enceladus since the Cassini spacecraft spotted them in 2005. The spray probably comes from a salty ocean beneath an icy shell.
Some of that water goes to form one of Saturn’s rings. Most of it falls back onto the moon’s surface as snow, Martin says. Scientists want to understand the properties of that snow — its thickness and how dense and compact it is. This could help reveal Enceladus’ history. It might also lay groundwork for future missions to this moon.
“If you’re going to land a robot there, you need to understand what it’s going to be landing into,” says Martin. She works at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
To figure out how thick that snow on Enceladus is, Martin’s team looked to Earth — specifically, Iceland. The island nation hosts geological features called pit chains. These lines of pockmarks in the ground form when loose rubble such as rocks, ice or snow drains into a crack below. Similar features show up all over the solar system, including on Enceladus.
Previous work suggested a way to use geometry and the angle at which sunlight hits the surface to measure the depth of the…
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