Images of a Saturn Moon Hint at Life-Friendly Water
Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show that Saturn's moon Enceladus may have liquid water erupting from giant Yellowstone-like geysers, raising the tantalizing possibility that the icy moon could support some form of life, scientists said Thursday.
"We realize that this is a radical conclusion," said Carolyn Porco, a researcher at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and head of the Cassini imaging team. "If we're right, we think we are looking at another environment in the solar system where we have liquid water and the potential for living organisms."
The images, taken over the last year, show eruptions in the southern polar region from volcanoes spitting water and ice particles up to 260 miles in space, according to a report published today in the journal Science.
Showing just how powerful the subsurface forces are, the plumes are almost as big as the moon itself, the scientists said.
Though scientists have found evidence of liquid water on other objects in the solar system, Porco said the confluence of water, heat from volcanic activity and previously detected organic compounds made Enceladus a prime candidate for NASA's search for life.
"This has the potential to redirect space exploration," Porco said.
Scientists cautioned that there was no way to know how much water was near the surface of the small moon or how long it had been there. There is no way to tell whether its environment is hospitable to life, they said.
"I don't think we know enough yet," said David Morrison, a senior scientist at NASA's Astrobiology Institute at the Ames Research Center near Mountain View, Calif.
But Porco said the presence of all three prime indicators for life made Enceladus a "better bet" than many other places in the solar system.
The Cassini spacecraft, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, has been observing Saturn and its 47 known moons since June 2004.
Until now, most of the major discoveries on the $3.3-billion mission involved Saturn's large moon, Titan, which is shrouded in an intriguing smog-like atmosphere of methane, ethane, acetylene and other hydrocarbons.
In January 2005, Cassini sent the European Space Agency's Huygens probe -- which had piggybacked a ride -- to Titan's surface. It found spongy ground covered by rocks of ice among which trickled hydrocarbon streams.
