To the Voyager spacecraft, Enceladus seemed like a fresh, smooth snowball. It was Cassini that first noticed how remarkable this small Saturn moon is indeed whose fissures blow fountains into the sky as if it were the Iceland of space.... more
To the Voyager spacecraft, Enceladus seemed like a fresh, smooth snowball.
It was Cassini that first noticed how remarkable this small Saturn moon is indeed whose fissures blow fountains into the sky as if it were the Iceland of space.
Cassini has now been dumped into Saturn, but what it has observed is by no means understood. Where does the heat originate that powers the geysers of Enceladus? Where do the organic substances inside come from? Can there even be life inside?
This book presents the outstanding observations of Cassini for the first time.
Long-lasting investigations, measurements and analysis by the Cassini-Huygens mission since 2004, showed that Saturn's fascinating satellites, Titan and Enceladus, present complex, dynamic and Earth-like geology [1]. Endogenous as... more
Long-lasting investigations, measurements and analysis by the Cassini-Huygens mission since 2004, showed that Saturn's fascinating satellites, Titan and Enceladus, present complex, dynamic and Earth-like geology [1]. Endogenous as well as exogenous ...
Detection of sodium-salt-rich ice grains emitted from the plume of the Saturnian moon Enceladus suggests that the grains formed as frozen droplets from a liquid water reservoir that is, or has been, in contact with rock. Gravitational... more
Detection of sodium-salt-rich ice grains emitted from the plume of the Saturnian moon Enceladus suggests that the grains formed as frozen droplets from a liquid water reservoir that is, or has been, in contact with rock. Gravitational field measurements suggest a regional south polar subsurface ocean of about 10 kilometres thickness located beneath an ice crust 30 to 40 kilometres thick. These findings imply rock-water interactions in regions surrounding the core of Enceladus. The resulting chemical 'footprints' are expected to be preserved in the liquid and subsequently transported upwards to the near-surface plume sources, where they eventually would be ejected and could be measured by a spacecraft. Here we report an analysis of silicon-rich, nanometre-sized dust particles (so-called stream particles) that stand out from the water-ice-dominated objects characteristic of Saturn. We interpret these grains as nanometre-sized SiO2 (silica) particles, initially embedded in icy ...
