Name: Is There Life on Enceladus?
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Nova

Scientists discover evidence for the key ingredients for life on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Is There Life on Enceladus?

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	NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn made surprising discoveries about Enceladus, one of Saturn's 62 moons. Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini mission's science imaging team, describes some of the features Cassini observed on this icy moon, including a series of large cracks named "tiger stripes," through which jets of frozen vapor shoot upward into space. She believes this frozen moon may be the best candidate to harbor life beyond Earth.
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<div class="rich-text">Scientists discover evidence for the key ingredients for life on Saturn's moon Enceladus.</div>

Space & Flight

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 CAROLYN PORCO:
 
 Cassini's mission, from the outset, was to investigate everything we could about the Saturn system. It is a major exploratory expedition.



 NARRATOR:
 
 Cassini gives scientists their best view yet of this mysterious planetary system.



 CAROLYN PORCO:
 
 Cassini was outfitted with the most sophisticated suite of scientific instruments ever carried into the outer solar system. It has cameras, spectrometers. It is really the farthest robotic outpost that humanity has ever established, around the sun.



 NARRATOR:
 
 Seven years after launch, Cassini finally enters orbit around Saturn.


 These images reveal the rings in unprecedented detail. They stretch out across hundreds of thousands of miles, yet in places, they are just tens of feet thick.


 Using its instruments to analyze wavelengths of reflected light, Cassini confirms these majestic rings are made of billions of shining particles of almost pure water ice. They range in size from a grain of dust to the size of a mountain.


 After nearly eight months collecting data of Saturn and its rings, Cassini makes its way to one of the closer moons.


 This tiny ball of ice, only 300 miles across, is Enceladus.


 These Cassini images reveal a glistening white surface, unlike any other of Saturn's moons. It is carved with crevasses, ridges and cracks.


 And stretching out across the south pole, Cassini photographs these strange large cracks, seen here in blue; four parallel fissures, scientists named the "tiger stripes." They are 75 miles long and hundreds of feet deep. They look a lot like fault lines on Earth.



 CAROLYN PORCO:
 
 Enceladus was a major focus for the Cassini mission. It was clear that there had been something going on on Enceladus, in the past. The question was, was there anything going on on Enceladus at present.



 NARRATOR:
 
 On another fly-by, Cassini's thermal imaging sensors reveal something unexpected. At the south pole, the tiger stripes should be colder than the rest of the moon, but they are radiating heat. Though still a frigid minus-120 degrees, the cracks are more than 200 degrees warmer than most of the moon.


 Then, as Cassini changes its orientation, it sees Enceladus silhouetted by the sun and vast jets of ice erupting into space.


 These actual images reveal the jets are blasting hundreds of miles out from the tiger stripes.


 Carolyn and her team are stunned.



 CAROLYN PORCO:
 
 Never did we expect that were going to see something like a whole forest of jets shooting hundreds of kilometers into the sky above Enceladus. It was like nothing we'd ever seen before.



 NARRATOR:
 
 Could Enceladus also have an internal energy source like Io and Europa? Scientists believe that when Enceladus orbits the massive Saturn, friction from gravitational forces causes it to heat up, melting ice in the moon's interior in the same way as on Europa.


 They believe the jets consist of liquid water, vaporizing and freezing, as it meets the cold vacuum of space. They shoot upwards at 1,200 miles per hour.



 CAROLYN PORCO:
 
 Enceladus is being flexed as it's orbiting Saturn. That's like flexing a paperclip. It creates heat inside, and we think the heat maintains liquid under the surface.



 NARRATOR:
 
 Excited by this discovery, the team programs Cassini to fly through the jets and collect particles. After several fly-throughs, Cassini's spectrometers detect, in the jets, some of the basic chemical building blocks of life.



 CAROLYN PORCO:
 
 That was tremendously exciting to find, because not only do we think there's liquid water there, not only is there an enormous amount of excess heat, but we also have organic materials. That, I mean, that is the trifecta that we're looking for, the three main ingredients for a habitable zone.
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