Geochemistry of Enceladus and implications for life detection ...

• Main Author: Perera, Liam
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Edinburgh 2021
• Subjects: Enceladus; ice-ocean interface; planetary scale geochemical cycles; cell detection; salts; extra-terrestrial life; South Pole; Sea ice; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/1848; https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/38585

Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is one of the most promising candidates for the search for life beyond Earth. The Cassini-Huygens mission revealed that Enceladus has a thick crust composed of water ice. Beneath this crust there is a subsurface liquid water ocean that erupts into space through jets near the south pole, forming a plume of ice and gas. It is suggested that this ocean may be habitable and future missions to Enceladus will likely involve life detection experiments on ejected plume material or of the surface around the plume source. A limitation to habitability on Enceladus is the freezing point of water; however, the presence of dissolved salts extends this freezing point to lower temperatures. On Earth, frozen environments such as sea-ice, snow and glacial surfaces, and subglacial lakes contain microbial ecosystems with complex dynamics. The presence of ice does not mean water is unavailable and liquid brine networks can extend throughout the ice, providing an extensive micro-environment for ...