REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — New research shows that there are biological signs on the surface of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Enceladus is a place where spacecraft can land to retrieve genuine traces of the key ingredients of life.
Reported Space, Thursday (21/12/2023), it is believed that these biological signs come from the subsurface ocean inside the world’s ice shell.
Enceladus has long been known to store organic molecules, compounds consisting of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, in its subsurface oceans. Before crashing onto Saturn’s surface in 2017, the Cassini spacecraft flew by plumes of material that erupted through fissures on Enceladus’ surface, detecting organic molecules such as methane and ethane, as well as other complex compounds that reached extremely high altitudes.
About 90 percent of these large grains of material, launched thousands of miles above Enceladus, did not actually escape the Saturnian system. Instead, they fell back to the surface of Saturn’s moon, scientists now say, where they could theoretically be collected and examined by spacecraft.
Amanda R Hendrix, senior scientist at The Planetary Science Institute and lead researcher, in a statement, said we can learn a lot about potential biosignatures in the ocean Enceladus by sending a mission to the surface of Enceladus.
“Previously, it was thought that to sample the freshest material from Enceladus’ ocean, you had to fly through the plume and measure grains and gases from the plume,” Hendrix said.
“But now we know that you can land on the surface and be confident that your instruments can measure relatively pure, marine-sourced organic material,” he said.
Some organic molecules in Enceladus plumes that may be the fingerprints of biological life may be destroyed by ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun. That means there is a desire to get these molecules while they are still natural.
“We know that Enceladus’ ocean is habitable thanks to Cassini’s measurements. We know there is liquid water, energy, and the chemicals carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. “These are the necessary ingredients for life as we know it,” Hendrix said. “If we want to know whether there are biological signatures of marine origin present in the agglomerate grains, we need these grains to be as pure as possible and not exposed to UV light.”
To find a place in….
2023-12-21 14:48:35
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