Global ocean present beneath icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus

After years of observation, NASA’s Cassini mission has discovered what they believe is definitive evidence that Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a global ocean lying directly underneath the icy crust. Prometheus is having width of approximately 53 miles whereas Pandora is considered to be about 52 miles wide. The spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004. They characterize Prometheus as a low-density object that has suffered very less meteor impacts as compared to its neighbors, Janus, Epimetheus and Pandora.

The subsurface ocean and all the geological activity on Enceladus favor the possibility of life.

The study was published in the journal Icarus an it shows that a global ocean is present beneath the frozen exterior of the space object.

“This is a major step beyond what we understood about this moon before, and it demonstrates the kind of deep-dive discoveries we can make with long-lived orbiter missions to other planets”, said Carolyn Porco, head of the Cassini imaging team at the Space Science Institute in Boulder.

Luciano Iess, who was the examine’s lead creator, stated that liveable environments come from utterly sudden locations from the photo voltaic system.

Previous analysis of Cassini data suggested the presence of a lens-shaped body of water, or sea, underlying the moon’s south polar region.

But gravity data that has been collected during a number of close passes of the spacecraft above the south polar region supported the possibility that the ocean might be global, according to the team. Researchers say that the water reservoir of the moon is available in direct contact with the rocks above. He points our that Enceladus’ solid ground is more porous than it appears, and that is why the water has sinked beneath the rocky core of the moon.

Peter Thomas form Cornell University, another lead author of the paper said, “This was a hard problem that required years of observations, and calculations involving a diverse collection of disciplines, but we are confident we finally got it right”.

When the satellite orbits Saturn, it has a very slight wobble, for which the researchers discovered an exact magnitude. Because the icy moon is not perfectly spherical and because it goes slightly faster and slower during different portions of its orbit around Saturn the giant planet subtly rocks Enceladus back and forth as it rotates.

The staff plugged their measurement of the wobble, referred to as a libration, into totally different fashions for the way Enceladus is perhaps organized on the within, together with ones during which the moon was frozen from floor to core. “This proves that there must be a global layer of liquid separating the surface from the core”. Only one thing remains a mystery, and that is how it was possible for Enceladus’ interior ocean to stay liquid.