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Organic Molecules Found on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus

The icy crust at the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus, composed as a mosaic from images captured in 2009 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, with geysers spraying plumes of ice crystals into space from the moon's inner ocean, which, according to a study published June 14, 2023 in the journal Nature, has been found to contain high concentrations of phosphorus, a chemical element essential to all forms of life on Earth. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. IMAGE WAS ROTATED 180 DEGREES FROM ORIGINAL ORIENTATION BY SOURCE

Scientists already believe that Enceladus, one of Saturn’s icy moons, could be a good place to look for alien life. New research has strengthened this idea by finding complex organic molecules in the icy plumes coming from its underground ocean.

These findings come from data collected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. The spacecraft detected organic compounds that had not been seen before. These compounds seem to come from ice particles ejected from the ocean beneath Enceladus’s frozen surface.

 

 

 

 

Categories: Science Technology