Science Objectives for Flagship-class mission concepts for the search for evidence of life at Enceladus ...
Cassini revealed that Saturn’s moon Enceladus hosts a subsurface ocean that meets the accepted criteria for habitability with bio-essential elements and compounds, liquid water, and energy sources available in the environment. Whether these conditions are sufficiently abundant and collocated to supp...
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2023
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.48577/jpl.vgjnli https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/citation?persistentId=doi:10.48577/jpl.VGJNLI |
| Summary: | Cassini revealed that Saturn’s moon Enceladus hosts a subsurface ocean that meets the accepted criteria for habitability with bio-essential elements and compounds, liquid water, and energy sources available in the environment. Whether these conditions are sufficiently abundant and collocated to support life remains unknown and cannot be determined from Cassini data. But, thanks to the plume of oceanic material emanating from Enceladus’s south pole, a new mission to Enceladus could search for evidence of life without having to descend through kilometers of ice. In this paper, we outline the science motivations for such a successor to Cassini, choosing determining whether Enceladus is inhabited as the primary science goal and assuming a resource level equivalent to NASA’s Flagship-class missions. We selected a set of potential biosignature measurements that are complementary and orthogonal to build a robust case for any life detection result. This result would be further informed by quantifications of the ... |
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