What is the habitability potential on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated a phenomenon known as tidal dissipation, which is when the gravity between two planetary bodies creates heat inside one or both bodies. In this case, the gravity interaction between Saturn and Enceladus could be heating the interior of the latter, resulting in its interior liquid water ocean. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for potentially finding life on Enceladus and what implications this could have on finding life elsewhere.
For the study, the researchers used a series of geophysical computer models to simulate the interior properties of Enceladus, specifically focusing on the distribution of interior heat from the outer ice shell to the core that could be responsible for the hydrothermal vents that are hypothesized to exist on the ocean floor. Similar hydrothermal vents exist on the ocean floors of Earth and have been observed to be teeming with life. In the end, the researchers found the models exhibited a wide range of estimates for the tidal dissipation and the type of ocean that exists beneath the ice shell.
The study concludes, “The necessary measurements suggested here can be achieved by a future mission that provides additional constraints on the static gravity field, topography, libration, tidal Love numbers, and rate of surface heat loss. The orbital state can be studied by ground-based or spacecraft astrometry. The methodology presented here is general and can be used to investigate the modes of tidal heating in other icy satellites, such as Europa, Ganymede, and Titan, through geophysical data that will become available by the upcoming Europa Clipper, Juice, and Dragonfly missions.”
This study comes as NASA’s Europa Clipper is currently en route to Europa to ascertain that moon’s habitability potential, along with NASA’s Dragonfly quadcopter slated to launch in summer 2028 to study Saturn’s moon, Titan, for that moon’s habitability potential.
What new insight into Enceladus’ habitability potential will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: The Planetary Science Journal
Featured Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute