NASA Cassini Opens Saturn´s Pandora Ocean Box

NASA Cassini Bright Horizon Shines in plumes, ice and ocean.

Cassini -mission active in flybys missions in Saturn and Saturn moons for the past 10 years revealed that yet another moon of Saturn is rich in ocean waters. Like Titan -only 10 years later the revelation comes in hand of the Moon Enceladus which homes an Ocean...but not just any ocean...Enceladus homes a Global Ocean beneath an ice surface. 

Iced-surface-massive-oceans begin to become a pattern in the search of outer space oceans and the ultimate search for life beyond our planet. Those following the Europa Clipper Mission amazed by the discoveries of Cassini. 

Enceladus -one of the brightest objects in our solar system now shines even brighter on the path of space exploration. It took Cassini over 10 years to finally reach the conclusions which rise today. 

"This was a hard problem that required years of observations, and calculations involving a diverse collection of disciplines, but we are confident we finally got it right," Peter Thomas, a Cassini imaging team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York told the media.

Cassini scientists analyzed more than seven years worth of images of Enceladus taken by the spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004. They carefully mapped the positions of features on Enceladus  across hundreds of images, in order to measure changes in the moon's rotation with extreme precision.

Finally on September 15 NASA confirmed that the Cassini had found a global ocean on Enceladus. 

“A global ocean is found beneath the icy crust of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus, according to new research using data from NASA's Cassini mission. Researchers found the magnitude of the moon's very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present,” NASA concluded. 

Researchers published the findings in a paper released by Journal Icarus. The paper dismisses the established belief that the Moon of Saturn only hosted an ocean in the polar regions.

“If Enceladus has life, we will find it," NASA top authorities assured. NASA immediately proposed a mission to Enceladus -the Enceladus Life Finder Mission. The Enceladus Life Finder Mission would land a probe in the moon of Saturn. 

If one would think that NASA is too busy with the Europa Clipper mission set to explore the oceans of Jupiter's moon and that NASA is going for a little too much by proposing a landing in a moon of Saturn one would have to turn to the history books to be corrected. 

Incredibly as it may sound NASA has already landed an explorer in a moon of Saturn and it was carried by no other than Cassini itself. It was called the NASA-ESA's Huygens explorer and is still considered the most distant human landing in space and took place.

“Huygens hitched a ride to the Saturn system during an epic, seven-year voyage attached to NASA's Cassini spacecraft,” NASA explains. The probe navigated into a fall, made a successful atmospheric entry and safe soft landing in Titan. What happened to probe and why is the program despite its magnificent achievement not that famous among the general public?

“Huygens continued to transmit back to Earth for another 72 minutes before contact was lost with Cassini as it dipped below the horizon. The stream of data provided a unique treasure trove of in situ measurements from the planet-sized satellite which scientists are still mining today,” NASA communicated 10 years after. 

Officially of 700 images transmitted by the probe only 350 were safely relayed back. Officially the loss of data was caused due to the loss of one of the double channels used to relay information. The Cassini–Huygens -unmanned spacecraft is still a flagship-class NASA–ESA–ASI robotic spacecraft and sure an inspiration for missions which come ahead.

Thos following the Europa Mission are aware of the deabte which is ongoing on the benefits of adding a small explorer to the mission which is officially a flyby mission. The Cassini–Huygens Titan Explorer and the success of Cassini in flyby observations add the most interesting chapters to the ongoing debate of the Europa mission. Ther Europa Mission is expected to flyby Jupiter´s moon just like Cassini orbits Saturn. 

“The Enceladus Life Finder mission, involving a small orbiter, would sample Saturn moon's geyser-like plumes for evidence of habitability and perhaps life,” NASA began to dream soon after the announcements of Cassini's new global ocean discovery. 

Astrobiologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL in Pasadena, California Steven Vance assured that global ocean such as those that are believed to be found in Enceladus would be highly dynamic with global currents. Global currents empower compelling scenarios for essential life factors. 

"This is a major step beyond what we understood about this moon before, and it demonstrates the kind of deep-dive discoveries we can make with long-lived orbiter missions to other planets," co-author Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley told the media. 

Cassini is scheduled to make a close flyby of Enceladus on October 28 in the mission's deepest-ever dive through the moon's active plume of icy material. The spacecraft will pass a just 49 kilometers above the moon's surface.

...At a distance of more than 237.3 thousand kilometers from Saturn it takes Enceladus 32.8 hours to orbit the giant. Enceladus covered in ice continues to reflect the sunlight like freshly fallen snow...