14 DAY TRIAL // The joint NASA/ESA mission Cassini-Huygens, currently in orbit around Saturn, has recently beamed back some amazing photos of a beautiful geyser eruption that took place on the moon Enceladus. The experts who investigated the images say that the emissions consisted mainly of water vapors, bringing further proof that water exists below the body's surface. The event took place on November 2, as Cassini was photographing the moon's South Pole, just 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface.
“If we can put the pieces together – a liquid ocean under the surface, heat driving the geysers and the organic molecules that are the building blocks of life - Enceladus might turn out to have the conditions that led to the origin of life on an earlier version of Earth,” Bonnie J. Buratti, a Cassini scientist, writes on the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) blog. According to experts, in addition to water, the plumes also contain organic molecules such as carbon dioxide, as well as chemical sodium.
Such occurrences are the reasons that gave birth to the idea that an ocean of liquid water may exist under the moon's surface in the first place. The combination that has been recently spotted resembles what comes out of the Old Faithful geyser in the Yellowstone National Park, the investigators add. The simple presence of liquid water boosts the hypothetical chances of some form of alien life existing by a large margin. “This is the first time we've found activity on a moon this small,” Buratti adds, quoted by Space.
The recent flight was Cassini's seventh around Enceladus. The spacecraft traveled at about 18,000 miles per hour (nearly 29,000 kilometers per hour), as it made its latest pass by the moon. The stated goals of this flyby were to analyze the size, mass, charge, speed, and composition of all the particles that came out of the plumes. The pictures are taken from a very advantageous position. The geysers are back-lit by sunlight, providing the experts with the optimal conditions for observing them.
Cassini is currently halfway through its extended mission period, which ends in 2010. It was launched in 1997 and managed to reach an orbit around Saturn in 2004. It has been sending large amounts of valuable scientific data ever since, and chances are that the mission will get another extension beyond next year. Enceladus is a very small moon, with a diameter of just 310 miles, or about 500 kilometers.