Evidence of water on Saturn's moonChicago : The Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus, the US space agency NASA has announced.
"The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon," NASA said Thursday.
"We realise that this is a radical conclusion - that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Colorado.
"However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."
Mission scientists report these and other Enceladus findings in this week's issue of Science.
High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process.
"The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above zero degrees Celsius, like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone (national park)," NASA said.
"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," scientist John Spencer said.
"Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust," said Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
"What's different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface."
Peter Thomas, Cassini imaging scientist, Cornell University in New York, said: "Our search for liquid water has taken a new turn. The type of evidence for liquid water on Enceladus is very different from what we've seen at Jupiter's moon Europa. On Europa the evidence from surface geological features points to an internal ocean. On Enceladus the evidence is direct observation of water vapour venting from sources close to the surface."
