Drink up. We鈥檙e about to get our best taste yet of the salty sea under Saturn鈥檚 moon Enceladus.
Tomorrow, NASA鈥檚 Cassini spacecraft is due to descend to within 49 kilometres of the surface 鈥� just a few kilometres higher than recent record-breaking skydives made by Alan Eustace and Felix Baumgartner on Earth. That will make it Cassini鈥檚 lowest pass ever through the plume of ice and vapour erupting from the moon.
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During the mere tenths of a second the probe spends within the plume, an on-board detector will count the patter of ice particles hitting the spacecraft. That will show whether the plumes are tight sprays, or rise in sheets from fractures on the surface.
Another instrument will fingerprint simple organic molecules from the underground ocean. 鈥淲e might have new organics that we haven鈥檛 seen previously,鈥� said of the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California during a NASA press conference on Monday.
Cassini鈥檚 instruments can鈥檛 detect life directly, but can measure levels of hydrogen in the plumes. That in turn gives us hints to what conditions exist at potentially habitable vents on the seafloor.
On Earth, simple microbial ecosystems thrive in the warmth of hydrothermal vents, where they can produce energy by metabolising hydrogen. Something similar may be occurring on Enceladus. 鈥淵ou could perhaps have very diverse kinds of life there,鈥� Spilker said.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
