Gushing geysers on Saturn's Moon

Like sprinklers hidden beneath the surface, a series of geysers — more than previously thought — are gushing water ice from fissures near the south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, new images reveal.

The newly released images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show the geysers of Enceladus in stunning detail. The photos caught a bounty of previously unknown plumes alongside known ones, and show at least one gusher that's lost power since NASA's last look at the moon.

The new images were taken during Cassini's flyby on Nov. 21, 2009, and include the best 3-D look ever obtained of a "tiger stripe" — a fissure that sprays icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds. They also show regions of Enceladus that were not well-mapped in previous flybys, including a southern area with crudely circular tectonic patterns.

Both large and small plumes were seen spouting from these famed tigers stripes along Enceladus' south pole. In one mosaic, created by two high-resolution images captured by the narrow-angle camera, 30 individual jets can be seen. More than 20 of them had not been identified before.

By photographing the jets over time, Cassini scientists can study the consistency of their activity.

"This last flyby confirms what we suspected," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini's imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The vigor of individual jets can vary with time, and many jets, large and small, erupt all along the tiger stripes."

The scientists also combined the visible-light images with heat data to create a map of a 25-mile (40-km) segment of the longest stripe, known as Baghdad Sulcus. The map illustrates the link between the geologically youthful surface fractures and the anomalously warm temperatures that have been recorded in the south polar region.

In these measurements, peak temperatures along Baghdad Sulcus exceed minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 93 degrees Celsius), and may be higher than minus 100 degrees F (minus 73 degrees C).



The temperatures, considered warm for Enceladus, probably result from heating of the fracture flanks by the warm, upwelling water vapor that propels the moon's ice-particle jets.

The fractures are chilly by Earth standards, but they're a cozy oasis compared to the numbing 50 Kelvin (minus 370 Fahrenheit) of their surroundings," said John Spencer, a composite infrared spectrometer team member based at Southwest Research Institute also in Boulder. "The huge amount of heat pouring out of the tiger stripe fractures may be enough to melt the ice underground."

Some Cassini scientists infer that the warmer the temperatures are at the surface, the greater the likelihood that jets erupt from liquid.

The Nov. 21 flyby, which brought the spacecraft to within 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of the moon's surface, was the eighth targeted encounter with Enceladus. It's the last look at Enceladus' south polar surface before that region goes into 15 years of darkness, NASA officials said.

And now that the Cassini mission has been extended through 2017, with 11 Enceladus flybys slated for the extension period, there are plenty of chances to capture more images of this icy moon. The spacecraft launched in 1997 and has been orbiting Saturn since 2004.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35565930/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Scientists find Water on One of Saturn's Moons

PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists working on the Cassini mission to Saturn have found evidence of liquid water on the planet's icy moon Enceladus, suggesting the possibility of life below its surface.

Scientists working on the Cassini space mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus. Their findings, based on analysis from data taken in plume fly-throughs in 2008 and reported in the journal Icarus, provide evidence for the presence of liquid water, which suggests the ingredients for life inside the icy moon. The Cassini plasma spectrometer, used to gather this data, also found other species of negatively charged ions including hydrocarbons.

“While it’s no surprise that there is water there, these short-lived ions are extra evidence for sub-surface water and where there’s water, carbon and energy, some of the major ingredients for life are present,” said lead author Andrew Coates from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

“The surprise for us was to look at the mass of these ions. There were several peaks in the spectrum, and when we analysed them we saw the effect of water molecules clustering together one after the other.” The measurements were made as Cassini plunged through Enceladus’ plume on March 12, 2008.

Enceladus thus joins Earth, Titan and comets where negatively charged ions are known to exist in the solar system. Negative oxygen ions were discovered in Earth’s ionosphere at the dawn of the space age. At Earth’s surface, negative water ions are present where liquid water is in motion, such as waterfalls or crashing ocean waves.

The Cassini plasma spectrometer, originally designed to take data in Saturn’s magnetic environment, measures the density, flow velocity and temperature of ions and electrons that enter the instrument. But since the discovery of Enceladus’ water ice plume, the instrument has also successfully captured and analysed samples of material in the jets.

Early in its mission, Cassini discovered the plume that fountains water vapour and ice particles above Enceladus. Since then, scientists have found that these water products dominate Saturn’s magnetic environment and create Saturn’s huge E-ring.

At Titan, the same instrument detected extremely large negative hydrocarbon ions with masses up to 13,800 times that of hydrogen. A paper in Planetary and Space Science by Coates and colleagues in December 2009 showed that, at Titan, the largest hydrocarbon or nitrile ions are seen at the lowest altitudes of the atmosphere that Cassini flew (950 kilometers (590 miles). They suggest these large ions are the source of the smog-like haze that blocks most of Titan’s surface from view. They may be representative of the organic mix called “tholins” by Carl Sagan when he produced the reddish brew of prebiotic chemicals in the lab from gases that were known to be present in Titan’s atmosphere. Tholins that may be produced in Titan’s atmosphere could fall to the moon’s surface and may even make up the sand grains of the dunes that dominate part of Titan’s equatorial region.

The new findings add to our growing knowledge about the detailed chemistry of Enceladus’ plume and Titan’s atmosphere, giving new understanding of environments beyond Earth where prebiotic or life-sustaining environments might exist.
More information: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm