Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has the conditions necessary for organic life to emerge. This conclusion was reached by a group of American planetary scientists from the University of California, San Diego. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Scientists say Enceladus is covered under its icy crust with salty oceans larger than Earth’s oceans. The moon is shedding clouds of ice into the surrounding area, as previous data from NASA’s Cassini probe showed.
In future space missions, space researchers hope to obtain the particles contained in the clouds and examine them for amino acids needed to form organic molecules.
Scientists conducted laboratory tests to test whether these compounds could survive being launched into space at 400 meters per second.
In the experiment, the team created ice grains using ionization and electrospray and then measured the mass and charge of each resulting particle. The results showed that the frozen amino acids could withstand impacts at speeds of up to 4.2 kilometers per second, allowing them to be collected using existing technologies.
Planetary scientists expect to test their calculations in practice during NASA’s Europa Clipper mission; During this mission, it is planned to send an automatic station to Europa, one of Jupiter’s largest moons, in 2024. Europa has the same icy composition as Enceladus.
Planetary scientists before in the name Saturn’s moon Titan and Jupiter’s moon Ganymede are the best places for the origin of extraterrestrial life in the solar system.