Exciting news for the potential habitability of Enceladus! A study zooms in on Cassini mission data gathered at Saturn’s icy moon and finds confirming evidence of hydrogen cyanide, a molecule needed to spark life as we know it and a supercharged chemical energy source to fuel it.
ALT Dramatic plumes (cloudy, white areas), both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds. More than 30 individual jets of different sizes can be seen in this image and more than 20 of them had not been identified before. This mosaic was created from two high-resolution images that were captured by the narrow-angle camera when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew past Enceladus and through the jets on Nov. 21, 2009.