Cassini discovers saltwater on Enceladus!

namloc1980

The amazing Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 has found strong evidence that one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has a subsurface liquid saltwater ocean. Link here and here for the story.

Cassini previously captured images of plumes eminating from icy geysers at Enceladus' south pole:



But now it has directly sampled the plumes and the icy particles are full of salt, giving compelling evidence for a subsurface liquid water ocean. :cool:


Here is Enceladus scaled to size against Ireland and Britain.

Plug

We have to go to there and Europa. Even microbial life and im a happy camper.

Kidchameleon

Plug wrote: »

We have to go to there and Europa. Even microbial life and im a happy camper.

Cant believe we haven't sent more probes to these places.

Turtwig

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Cant believe we haven't sent more probes to these places.

Eh? We landed one on Titan.

Kidchameleon

Malty_T wrote: »

Eh? We landed one on Titan.

Precisely my point.

Turtwig

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Precisely my point.

Usually when you're learning how to build something like a bridge, car, or skyscraper you just build one first and refine from there.;)

Kidchameleon

Malty_T wrote: »

Usually when you're learning how to build something like a bridge, car, or skyscraper you just build one first and refine from there.;)

Ok, look my original point was that I cant believe we haven't sent more probes to places like Europa ect. Can you stop trolling now?

Turtwig

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Ok, look my original point was that I cant believe we haven't sent more probes to places like Europa ect. Can you stop trolling now?

Yeah, uh, but just look at the successive Mars rovers.They had a gradual increase in size,function and responsibility. You can't just send out probes to places like mad. It's a slow steady process. Landing on Titan was a great feat, we shouldn't be that greedy. More to the point though,iirc, when Cassini Huygens was originally planned little interest was seen in either Enceladus or Europa.:)

Ardent

Wow, can't believe Enceladus is so small!

Salt water, eh? If I was a betting man I would say there has to be life of some sort in that water.

maninasia

Malty_T wrote: »

Yeah, uh, but just look at the successive Mars rovers.They had a gradual increase in size,function and responsibility. You can't just send out probes to places like mad. It's a slow steady process. Landing on Titan was a great feat, we shouldn't be that greedy. More to the point though,iirc, when Cassini Huygens was originally planned little interest was seen in either Enceladus or Europa.:)

Well the Viking landers were the only ones equipped to search for life on Mars, that was over 30 years ago. How slow do we need to go?
Just go and do it should be the attitude.

namloc1980

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Ok, look my original point was that I cant believe we haven't sent more probes to places like Europa ect. Can you stop trolling now?

maninasia wrote: »

Well the Viking landers were the only ones equipped to search for life on Mars, that was over 30 years ago. How slow do we need to go?
Just go and do it should be the attitude.

Sending probes to places like Europa and Enceladus is very expensive in terms of the money needed to actually develop the technology and then fly and operate the missions. Only one agency is capable of sending probes to these places and that's NASA. However with an annual budget for 2012 of $1.5bn for planetary science, and with that budget amount expected to decline in the future, there is only so much that can be done.

Rubecula

To the OP

This is an amazing and potentially most important discovery to date. Salt water COULD mean life. Yes it may not, but until we know for certain one way or the other, the potential for something truly fantastic remains. If life is found on any of the moons it will change our own existence forever. It will mean We Are Not Alone. And it will probably indicate life exists in every possible corner of the universe.

Ardent

Rubecula wrote: »

And it will probably indicate life exists in every possible corner of the universe.

Very true. This would certainly answer the most important question we have always asked: are we alone?

namloc1980

Rubecula wrote: »

To the OP

This is an amazing and potentially most important discovery to date. Salt water COULD mean life. Yes it may not, but until we know for certain one way or the other, the potential for something truly fantastic remains. If life is found on any of the moons it will change our own existence forever. It will mean We Are Not Alone. And it will probably indicate life exists in every possible corner of the universe.

The evidence is mounting for Enceladus to be a home for some form of life. Back in 2008 during a fly through the plume Cassini identified a number of key chemicals in the plume:



amongst them being water, carbon dioxide, methane and organic compounds. Organic in this context doesn't mean life, but means the compounds are made primarily of Hydrogen and Carbon. These are all the key ingredients for life!

In addition Cassini's infrared camera has previously shown that the South Pole of Enceladus is a source of significant internal heat:



So what do we have:
- a source of heat,
- water,
- organic compounds,
- and now salt! This means there are minerals also in this water!!

Of course, all this doesn't actually mean life exists on Enceladus, but all the ingredients are there!

_Tombstone_

4 year Thread bump!!

So, due to the wobble:eek: as it orbits Saturn, they've confirmed that their is a GLOBAL Ocean seperating the Core from the Surface. Lots more info here + they have a fly past coming up on OCT 28 thats just 30 miles from the surface.

_Tombstone_

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

+ they have a fly past coming up on OCT 28 thats just 30 miles from the surface.

And it's done and it survived, raw pic.




It'll be a week or two before results of the spray will be revealed. It has another fly by coming up in December where it'll measure how hot the plumes are.


http://www.examiner.com/article/nasa-releases-first-images-of-cassini-s-dive-through-the-geyser-of-enceladus?cid=db_articles

Loads and loads of info in links in that link.

MeteoritesEire

great stuff

Carawaystick

What's the horizontal line/band lower down in the image?

snowstreams

When is the results of the plume test going to be released to the public? Or have they been released but of no interest?
I thought it would take a week or 2 for the samples to be fully analysed but I couldn't find anything online.

_Tombstone_

snowstreams wrote: »

When is the results of the plume test going to be released to the public? Or have they been released but of no interest?
I thought it would take a week or 2 for the samples to be fully analysed but I couldn't find anything online.

Heres the mission page for the October flyby listing their goals

Some of Goals 2 and 3 are answered on this page here Enceladus Top 10 Science Results

Biggest thing missing is whether their is

Molecular hydrogen, or H2, is a simple energy source that feeds microbial communities living in deep sea vents on Earth today, and if we find it on Enceladus, that’d be a big deal.

and results of that is gonna take months <--> Saturdays flyby was checking for heat and how much of it their is.

“Measuring the heat from the south pole is a very important constraint on how much heat there is in the interior,” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Gizmodo in a phone interview. And determining how hot the moon’s core is will help astrobiologists figure out whether Enceladus really can support life.

AMKC

Well Cassini is now no more. NASA decided that with the spacecrafts fuel low to and prevent planetary contamination it was best to have it burn up in Saturn's atmosphere.

Capt'n Midnight

Plug wrote: »

We have to go to there and Europa. Even microbial life and im a happy camper.

I'd settle for an RNA world or even self replicating macro-molecules.

Rubecula

goodbye Cassie that was one hell of a job you did.