The hidden ocean under the icy shell of the Moon of Saturn Alceladus houses complex organic molecules, said a study on Wednesday, which offers more evidence that the small world could have all the correct ingredients for extraterrestrial life.
Only 500 kilometers (310 miles) wide and invisible to the naked eye, the white and covered scars is one of the hundreds of moons that orbit the sixth planet from the sun.
For a long time, scientists believed that it was too far from the sun, and therefore too cold, to be habitable.
Then, Cassini’s space probe flew beyond the moon several times during a 2004-2017 trip to Saturn and its rings, discovering evidence that a vast ocean of salt water is hidden under the ice layer of the miles of the moon.
Since then, scientists have been examining the data collected by Cassini, revealing that the ocean has many of the elements that are believed to be needed for the life of the reception, including salt, methane, carbon dioxide and phosphorus.
When the spacecraft passed over the South Pole of the Moon, it discovered water jets that exploded through cracks on the surface.
These jets boosted small ice particles, smaller than sand grains, space. While some of these ice grains returned to the surface of the moon, others were collected around one of the many Saturn rings.
When Cassini flew through the most external Saturno ring, it was “detecting samples all the time,” said Nozair Khawaja, a planetary scientist at the Free University of Berlin and principal author of the new study, in a statement from the statement European Space Agency.
Looking through these samples, scientists had previously identified numerous organic molecules, including the precursors of amino acids, which are fundamental construction blocks of life.
But these ice grains could have been altered after being trapped in the ring for hundreds of years, or beaten by explosions of cosmic radiation.
Then scientists wanted to look at some fresh ice grains.
Fortunately, they already had access to some.
When Cassini flew directly to the aerosol, leaving the moon surface in 2008, ice grains hit the cosmic dust analyzer of the spacecraft about 18 kilometers per second.
But it took years to complete a detailed chemical analysis of these particles, which was the subject of the study published in the magazine Astronomy of Nature.
Back to the moon?
The study co -author, Frank Postberg said that the investigation shows that “the Cassini complex organic molecules detected in Saturn’s ‘E’ ring are not only a product of a long exposure to space, but are available in the staring ocean.”
French astrochemistry Caroline Freissinet, who did not participate in the study, told AFP that “there was not much doubt” that these molecules were in the moon ocean.
But this confirmation provides “another piece in the puzzle,” he added.
It also shows that recent technology, such as artificial intelligence, allows scientists to perform new types of analysis in old data, he said.
But to have the best idea about what is happening in greeting, a mission would need to land near the ice creams and collect samples, he added.
The European Space Agency has been studying the potential of a mission that would do exactly that.
After all, “Encelado offers all the boxes to be a habitable environment that could support life,” said the agency in the statement.
Khawaja added that “not even finding life in redness would be a great discovery, because it raises serious questions about why life is not present in such an environment when the correct conditions are there.”
