Blue moon infrared view of Enceladus as seen by Cassini,(credit- NASA/JPL- Caltech/University of Arizona/LPG/CNRS/University of Nantes/Space Science Institute)

Enceladus is one of the prime targets in humanity’s search for life in our solar system. In the years since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft visited the Saturn system, we have been repeatedly blown away by the discoveries made possible by the collected data. Enceladus, though tiny, also hides a liquid water ocean beneath an icy shell. But this time, scientists found that the little moon is doing something extraordinary. 

Before delving into the depths of this discovery, let's first look at why this discovery is important, and how it helped scientists locate life on Enceladus.


A tour of our solar system reveals a stunning diversity of worlds, from charbroiled Mercury and Venus to the frozen outer reaches of the Oort Cloud. In between are a few tantalizing prospects for life beyond Earth ­– subterranean Mars, maybe, or the moons of giant planets with their hidden oceans – but so far, it’s just us.


Mary Voytek, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. says “There’s nothing else in the solar system with lots of life on it,” “Otherwise, we would have likely detected it.”

Still, NASA continues searching the solar system for signs of life, past or present, and decades of investigation have begun to narrow down the possibilities. 


In 2017, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft was passing over Enceladus, Cassini saw something on Enceladus that surprised the scientists. When the Cassini spacecraft was passing over this tiny moon of Saturn, Cassini spacecraft noticed that something was coming out of the cracks of Enceladus's surface. Scientists have named these cracks of Enceladus as Tiger Strip.


As Enceladus travels in its elliptical orbit about Saturn, the moon flexes as it gets nearer to its parent planet, then farther, then nearer again. Four great cracks known as the “tiger stripes” near its south pole spread, then squeeze and grind. Due to this Warm salt water, gases and minerals erupt through those fractures in the miles-thick ice shell and blast through the surface at 800 miles or (1,300 kilometers) per hour into space.

This cutaway view of Saturn's moon Enceladus is an artist's rendering that depicts possible hydrothermal activity. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

While passing through this eruption, the Cassini spacecraft collected some samples of this water vapor. In which scientists found that all the essential elements that support life on Earth are present in the ocean of Enceladus

Well this is not the only thing that Cassini spacecraft discovered on Enceladus, During the spacecraft’s final close flyby it found that, something else may be steadily burbling, a thing previously known to exist only on Earth. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected convincing evidence of hydrothermal vents on Enceladus's sea floor, A lot of origin-of-life scientists believe that this is the place where life could have started on Earth. Finding something like this on a planet other than Earth is a great sign that there may be life.



Morgan Cable, a research scientist who studies ocean worlds at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says, They may be different but all hydrothermal vents tend to have not just bacteria and other microorganisms, but large, multicellular, complex organisms as well. 

No spacecraft has landed on Enceladus, drilled through its miles-thick ice shell or visited its seafloor to observe an extraterrestrial hydrothermal vent. But Enceladus has supplied Cassini with free samples of its ocean environment by steadily spraying ocean water into space where the spacecraft’s instruments can analyze it. And scientists have studied the environment around Earth’s hydrothermal vents for decades, which gives them a comparison for Cassini data.

From sampling the moon’s water jets and Saturn’s E ring, which is made of material from those jets, Cassini scientists have found three lines of evidence that suggest the moon's global ocean hosts active hydrothermal vents.

During several flybys between 2005 and 2015, Cassini flew straight through these plumes, getting a glimpse of the chemical compounds that exist deep within Enceladus’ ocean. However, one element that escaped detection was phosphorus – which is a key ingredient of structures including DNA, cell membranes, bones and teeth. While a lack of phosphorus would throw Enceladus’ habitability into doubt, Cassini’s brief observations were far from exhaustive

In this latest study, a team led by Jihua Hao at the University of Science and Technology of China and Christopher Glein at the Southwest Research Institute in the US used geochemical modelling techniques to obtain an estimate of the moon’s phosphorous abundance. Firstly, they used thermodynamic modelling to evaluate the stabilities of different forms of dissolved phosphorus – varying factors including the temperature and pH of the ocean.


These simulations showed that phosphorus could be rapidly released through the weathering of the moon’s rocky seafloor. In turn, this is expected to produce phosphorus concentrations close to, or possibly even exceeding the levels present in seawater on Earth. 

Such a high abundance would mean that life in Enceladus’ liquid ocean would not be constrained by a lack of phosphorus – further strengthening the possibility that life may have emerged beneath the small moon’s icy surface. Most scientists have confirmed that if all the chemicals that have been detected so far, and that data is correct, then there will definitely be life in the sea of ​​Enceladus.Maybe we find a different species that has never been found in the Earth before. But Enceladus has great potential to host life as compared to other planets and moons in our solar system.


Maybe we can find a different species that has never been found on Earth before. But compared to the other planets and moons in our solar system, Enceladus has great potential to host life. Dr. Morgan Cabal said “Let’s say you have all the ingredients for life there, but no life yet. Wait about 10 million years and you should have life,” "And the liquid water, the heat, and the inferred hydrothermal activity on Enceladus have been going on for 40 million years or more. Maybe more than 100 million years. If you compare that against the 10 million years, there’s plenty of time for life to have emerged,”.

She also said, "The more we study our own cosmic backyard, the more surprises we find,".

"And I'm excited. We'll be surprised more and more as we continue to extend our senses to the outer solar system and beyond". Scientists have said that before this we have not said with such confidence about the possibility of life on any other planet, but scientists are quite confident about Enceladus.