Saturn’s moon Enceladus made waves in 2015 with two dramatic liquid-water-related discoveries, establishing the world as a target of great interest in the search for life.
After astronomers analyzed seven years’ worth of Enceladus data from NASA’s Cassini probe, they detected a slight rocking motion in the moon’s rotation, suggesting an outer shell of ice.
“That could only be the case if the ice shell was not frozen to the core but separated by a layer of liquid,” says team member Carolyn Porco. The team believes a shallow global ocean, perhaps only a mile deep, lies between Enceladus’ rocky core and its 30-mile-thick icy crust. At the south polar region, where about 100 saltwater geysers erupt from the surface, the ocean is likely deeper and the crust thinner.
This news came on the heels of an earlier discovery, when a team of planetary scientists announced the likely presence of hydrothermal ...
