ICY SCIENCE: SCIENCE SPACE ASTRONOMY Spring 2014 | Page 36

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This is a close-up of carbonate rock at
Lost City, with a robot arm investigating.
All those nooks are filled with life. Credit:
University of Washington, IFE, URI-IAO,
NOAA

chemicals life could use to live. Ammonia, methane,
carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, complex carbon
molecules - what you’d expect from the chemistry of
water and silicate rock interacting. This means that all
four of the basic ingredients thought to be needed for

Meanwhile, back on Enceladus, the jets have

life are within Enceladus: water, nitrogen (ammonia),

been sending icy spray out into Saturn’s E-ring.

organic carbon (simple and complex carbon molecules

Cassini has flown three times through the jets

- organic means that it is in a form that life can use),

and has analyzed what kind of particles make up

and a source of energy (heat, and probably hydrogen).

the E-ring, and it looks like the jets of Enceladus

There is some kind of strong heat happening, although

are actually responsible for the material in the

researchers still don’t know if the resulting jets are

ring. That’s pretty cool, but what is grabbing the

from the rock reactions heating the seawater, or if the

attention of astrobiologists is that in the jet ice are

jets come from parts of the deep ice layer above it.

ICY SCIENCE | QTR 2 SPRING 2014