Scientists have already claimed that Enceladus, Saturn's icy moon, is a promising candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life. Recent research has given a boost to existing findings, with scientists discovering complex organic molecules in the icy plumes erupting from its subsurface ocean.
The findings are based on analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. It found evidence of organic compounds, which were previously undetected. The compounds appear to be a plume of ice particles ejected from the ocean, lying beneath the frozen shell of Enceladus.
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According to NASA, "The newly detected compounds included those from the aliphatic and cyclic ester and ether families, some with double bonds in their molecular structures. Together with the confirmed aromatic, nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing compounds, these compounds can form the building blocks to support chemical reactions and processes that could have led to more complex organic chemistry."
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"Previously, we detected organics in ice grains that were years old and potentially altered by the intense radiation environment surrounding them," Nozair Khawaja of the Freie Universitat Berlin, lead author of the study, as quoted.
"These new organic compounds were just minutes old, found in ice that was fresh from the ocean below Enceladus' surface."
"These molecules we found in the freshly ejected material prove that the complex organic molecules Cassini detected in Saturn's E ring are not just a product of long exposure to space, but are readily available in Enceladus' ocean," co-author Frank Postberg, also of Freie Universität Berlin, said as quoted.
