- News

On 22 June, 2011, a team of scientists from Germany found that the water vapour emanating from the active geysers at Enceladus’ South Pole contains large salt grains. This is significant evidence for a salty liquid ocean below the moon’s icy surface.

Enceladus is the 6th largest satellite of Saturn, orbiting in the densest part of the E-ring. This suggests it supplies the E-ring with material, although the material in the ring seems to contain less salt than in Enceladus’ plumes. Only two other outer solar system bodies so far have had active eruptions observed; Jupiter’s moon Io, and Neptune’s moon Titan. The team, led by Frank Postberg, Cassini scientist on the Cosmic Dust Analyser at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, concludes that liquid water must be present. It is the only way in which this level of salt can be accounted for, due to its solubility. This indicates that the expelled ice does not come from the icy surface, but rather from liquid saltwater in a sub-surface ocean.

“The discovery of the Enceladus plume is one of the top scientific achievements of the Cassini-Huygens mission so far’’ adds Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA’s Huygens Project Scientist.

In May 2011, NASA scientists at an Enceladus Focus Group Conference reported that this moon is ‘’emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the Solar System for life as we know it.’’ To read more on this discovery, visit the ESA website.