NASA Missions Provide New Insights into 'Ocean Worlds' in Our Solar System

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NASA Missions Provide New Insights into 'Ocean Worlds' in Our Solar System
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
April 13, 2017

Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing
moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest
of these and other "ocean worlds" in our solar system and beyond. The
findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with
NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope.

In the papers, Cassini scientists announce that a form of chemical energy
that life can feed on appears to exist on Saturn's moon Enceladus, and
Hubble researchers report additional evidence of plumes erupting from
Jupiter's moon Europa.

"This is the closest we've come, so far, to identifying a place with some
of the ingredients needed for a habitable environment," said Thomas Zurbuchen,
associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters
in Washington. "These results demonstrate the interconnected nature of
NASA's science missions that are getting us closer to answering whether
we are indeed alone or not."

› DOWNLOAD VIDEO Ingredients for Life at Enceladus

The paper from researchers with the Cassini mission, published in the
journal Science, indicates hydrogen gas, which could potentially provide
a chemical energy source for life, is pouring into the subsurface ocean
of Enceladus from hydrothermal activity on the seafloor.

The presence of ample hydrogen in the moon's ocean means that microbes
- if any exist there - could use it to obtain energy by combining the
hydrogen with carbon dioxide dissolved in the water. This chemical reaction,
known as "methanogenesis" because it produces methane as a byproduct,
is at the root of the tree of life on Earth, and could even have been
critical to the origin of life on our planet.

Life as we know it requires three primary ingredients: liquid water; a
source of energy for metabolism; and the right chemical ingredients, primarily
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. With this finding,
Cassini has shown that Enceladus - a small, icy moon a billion miles farther
from the sun than Earth - has nearly all of these ingredients for habitability.
Cassini has not yet shown phosphorus and sulfur are present in the ocean,
but scientists suspect them to be, since the rocky core of Enceladus is
thought to be chemically similar to meteorites that contain the two elements.

"Confirmation that the chemical energy for life exists within the ocean
of a small moon of Saturn is an important milestone in our search for
habitable worlds beyond Earth," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Graphic illustrating how scientists think water interacts with rock at
the bottom of the ocean This graphic illustrates how Cassini scientists
think water interacts with rock at the bottom of the ocean of Saturn's
icy moon Enceladus, producing hydrogen gas. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Southwest
Research Institute
› Larger image

The Cassini spacecraft detected the hydrogen in the plume of gas and icy
material spraying from Enceladus during its last, and deepest, dive through
the plume on Oct. 28, 2015. Cassini also sampled the plume's composition
during flybys earlier in the mission. From these observations scientists
have determined that nearly 98 percent of the gas in the plume is water,
about 1 percent is hydrogen and the rest is a mixture of other molecules
including carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia.

The measurement was made using Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer
(INMS) instrument, which sniffs gases to determine their composition.
INMS was designed to sample the upper atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.
After Cassini's surprising discovery of a towering plume of icy spray
in 2005, emanating from hot cracks near the south pole, scientists turned
its detectors toward the small moon.

Cassini wasn't designed to detect signs of life in the Enceladus plume
- indeed, scientists didn't know the plume existed until after the spacecraft
arrived at Saturn.

"Although we can't detect life, we've found that there's a food source
there for it. It would be like a candy store for microbes," said Hunter
Waite, lead author of the Cassini study.

The new findings are an independent line of evidence that hydrothermal
activity is taking place in the Enceladus ocean. Previous results, published
in March 2015, suggested hot water is interacting with rock beneath the
sea; the new findings support that conclusion and add that the rock appears
to be reacting chemically to produce the hydrogen.

The paper detailing new Hubble Space Telescope findings, published in
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reports on observations of Europa from
2016 in which a probable plume of material was seen erupting from the
moon's surface at the same location where Hubble saw evidence of a plume
in 2014. These images bolster evidence that the Europa plumes could be
a real phenomenon, flaring up intermittently in the same region on the
moon's surface.

The newly imaged plume rises about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Europa's
surface, while the one observed in 2014 was estimated to be about 30 miles
(50 kilometers) high. Both correspond to the location of an unusually
warm region that contains features that appear to be cracks in the moon's
icy crust, seen in the late 1990s by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Researchers
speculate that, like Enceladus, this could be evidence of water erupting
from the moon's interior.

"The plumes on Enceladus are associated with hotter regions, so after
Hubble imaged this new plume-like feature on Europa, we looked at that
location on the Galileo thermal map. We discovered that Europa's plume
candidate is sitting right on the thermal anomaly," said William Sparks
of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Sparks led the
Hubble plume studies in both 2014 and 2016.

The researchers say if the plumes and the warm spot are linked, it could
mean water being vented from beneath the moon's icy crust is warming the
surrounding surface. Another idea is that water ejected by the plume falls
onto the surface as a fine mist, changing the structure of the surface
grains and allowing them to retain heat longer than the surrounding landscape.

For both the 2014 and 2016 observations, the team used Hubble's Space
Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) to spot the plumes in ultraviolet
light. As Europa passes in front of Jupiter, any atmospheric features
around the edge of the moon block some of Jupiter's light, allowing STIS
to see the features in silhouette. Sparks and his team are continuing
to use Hubble to monitor Europa for additional examples of plume candidates
and hope to determine the frequency with which they appear.

NASA's future exploration of ocean worlds is enabled by Hubble's monitoring
of Europa's putative plume activity and Cassini's long-term investigation
of the Enceladus plume. In particular, both investigations are laying
the groundwork for NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which is planned for
launch in the 2020s.

"If there are plumes on Europa, as we now strongly suspect, with the Europa
Clipper we will be ready for them," said Jim Green, Director of Planetary
Science, at NASA Headquarters.

Hubble's identification of a site which appears to have persistent, intermittent
plume activity provides a tempting target for the Europa mission to investigate
with its powerful suite of science instruments. In addition, some of Sparks'
co-authors on the Hubble Europa studies are preparing a powerful ultraviolet
camera to fly on Europa Clipper that will make similar measurements to
Hubble's, but from thousands of times closer. And several members of the
Cassini INMS team are developing an exquisitely sensitive, next-generation
version of their instrument for flight on Europa Clipper.

For more information on ocean worlds in our solar system and beyond, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/ocean-worlds

News Media Contact
Felicia Chou
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0257
felici...@nasa.gov

Preston Dyches
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-7013
preston...@jpl.nasa.gov

Donna Weaver / Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore
410-338-4493 / 410-338-4514
dwe...@stsci.edu / vil...@stsci.edu

2017-106