New invigorating molecules found in the 17 -year data of Saturn’s Moon Enlade

The southern Pôle d’Inclade – a tiny orbit moon from Saturn – is a volatile place. In this region, the underground ocean of the moon spits water jets through four cracks in “tiger” in the icy crust, leading to a single plume of ice particles which extends hundreds of kilometers in space.

The Cassini spacecraft spent two decades studying these particles to seek evidence of habitability on Enlade. In 2008, the probe stolen directly through the frozen plume to study the particles which were only ejected a few minutes before hitting the cosmic dust analyzer of the spacecraft (CDA). More than 15 years later, scientists finally deciphered this data, noting that particles contained organic molecules never seen in the ejections of Enladus before.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, explains that the newly detected molecules include those involved in chains of chemical reactions which ultimately give birth to more complex molecules which are essential to life on earth, according to researchers.

“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 the main author Nozair Khawaja, researcher from Freie University Berlin, in a declaration by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The search for signs of habitability on Encelade

The basement of Enceladus has captured astrobiologists since the Cassini mission, a joint company between NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency (ASI), the first proof discovered in 2014. Life as we know that it cannot exist without water, therefore a moon with a large reserve of the substance is a fairly good place to look for molecules of life.

Cassini orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 before diving considerably into the radiated planet. Meanwhile, the probe has detected many organic molecules – including phosphorus and precursors for amino acids – when it stole across the Saturn cycle E, which is largely composed of Enladus ejected water ice.

However, ice grains in the E ring can have hundreds of years. As they get older, they can lose traces of organic molecules present in the underground ocean of Enceladus. To better understand what is really going on there, Khawaja and his colleagues decided to analyze the data from a cooler source.

Get closer to the source

The researchers specifically examined the data that Cassini collected during his foray into the glossy panache of Enlade. The freshly ejected particles struck the CDA instrument of the high -speed space machine, 11 miles (18 kilometers) per second.

The impact speed has proven to be just as important as the freshness of the particles. “At lower impact speeds, ice breaks and the signal of water molecules clusters can hide the signal from certain organic molecules,” said Khawaja. “But when the ice grains strike CDA quickly, the water molecules are not regrouped, and we are lucky to see these previously hidden signals.”

This would explain why he and his colleagues discovered new organic molecules in this data. They also detected some who had already been found in the ring e, confirming that they come from the ocean of Enceladus. This contradicts the recent evidence that suggests that these molecules can actually result from chemistry based on radiation on the surface of the moon and inside its plumes.

Although the results strengthen the case of the habitability of Enceladus, there is still a lot of work to do to confirm whether this chipper can support life. ESA aims to launch another mission to explore this distant moon, this time looking for signs of habitability on the surface.

“Even not finding life on Encelade would be a huge discovery, because it raises serious questions about the reasons why life is not present in such an environment when the right conditions are there,” Khawaja said.