The ocean hidden under the icy shell of the moon of Saturn Enladus is home to complex organic molecules, said a study on Wednesday, which offers additional evidence that the little world could have all the good ingredients to accommodate extraterrestrial life.
Only 310 miles wide and invisible to the naked eye, the white covered in the scar is one of the hundreds of orbit moons around the sixth planet of the sun.
For a long time, scientists believed that Enceladus was too far from the sun – and therefore too cold – to be habitable.
Then, the Cassini space probe stolen several times above the moon during a trip in 2004-2017 to Saturn and its rings, discovering evidence that A large ocean of salt water is hidden Under the layer of ice miles from the moon.
Since then, scientists have passed through the data collected by Cassini, revealing that the ocean has many elements considered to accommodate life, including salt, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide phosphorus.
When the spacecraft crossed the southern pole of the moon, it discovered jets of water exploded through the cracks on the surface.
These jets propel tiny ice particles – smaller than grains of sand – in space. While some of these ice grains fall back on the surface of the moon, others have gathered around one of the many Saturn rings.
When Cassini stolen through the most external “E” ring of Saturn, she “detected Enladus samples all the time, Nozair Khawaja, planetary scientist of the Berlin Free University and the main author of the new study, in a statement from the European Space Agency.
“There are many possible pathways of the organic molecules that we have found in Cassini data to potentially biologically relevant compounds, which improves the probability that the moon is habitable,” said Nozair.
AP 
By browsing these samples, scientists had previously identified many organic molecules – including the precursors of amino acids, which are fundamental elements of life.
But these ice grains could have been modified after being trapped in the ring for hundreds of years – or beating by explosions of cosmic radiation.
Scientists therefore wanted to look at fresh ice grains.
Fortunately, they already had access to some.
When Cassini flew directly into the spray spitting the surface of the moon in 2008, ice grains struck the cosmic dust analyzer of the spaceship at around 11 miles per second.
But it took years to carry out a detailed chemical analysis of these particles, which was the subject of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“Being habitable and inhabited are two very different things. We think that the Enceladé is habitable, but we do not know if life is actually present,” the Associated Press Fabian Klenner told Washington, who participated in the study.
“Having a variety of organic compounds on a world of extraterrestrial water is simply phenomenal,” said Klenner at AP in an email.
“Another piece of the puzzle”
The study co-author, Frank Postberg, said that research proves that “complex organic molecules that Cassini detected in Saturn ring are not only a product of a long exposure to space, but are easily available in the ocean of Enlade”.
The French ASSONTROCHE Caroline Freissinet, who was not involved in the study, told AFP that there was “no doubt” that these molecules were in the ocean of the moon.
But this confirmation provides “another part in the puzzle,” she added.
It also shows that recent technology such as artificial intelligence allows scientists to carry out new types of analysis on old data, she said.
But to get the best idea of what’s going on on Encelade, a mission should land near icy geysers and collect samples, she added.
The European Space Agency has studied the potential of a mission that would do exactly.
After all, “Enladus knocks down all the boxes to be a habitable environment that could support life,” the agency said in the press release.
Khawaja added that “even not finding life on Enlade would be a huge discovery, because it raises serious questions about the reasons why life is not present in such an environment where the right conditions are there.”
NASA has a spacecraft on the way to another attractive target to hunt the ingredients of life: the moon of Jupiter Europa. The Europa clipper should start in orbit in orbit Jupiter in 2030 with dozens of Europa flies. ESA also has a spacecraft, juice, which heads for Jupiter to explore Europa and two other frozen moons that could contain buried oceans.
The underground oceans on moons “may be the best candidates for the emergence of extraterrestrial life in our solar system. This work only confirms the need for additional studies,” said Kent University professor Nigel Mason, who was not involved in the latest discoveries, said AP.
contributed to this report.
