Saturday, April 5, 2014

Water exists on Saturn's moon Enceladus

I heard this report last night on the evening news and had to check it out.  Information is from the web page http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20140403/.

The diagram below illustrates the possible interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus based on a gravity investigation by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Deep Space Network, reported in April 2014. The gravity measurements suggest an ice outer shell and a low density, rocky core with a regional water ocean sandwiched in between at high southern latitudes.  Scientists estimate that the body of water hidden inside this moon is the size of Lake Superior.

Views from Cassini's imaging science subsystem were used to depict the surface geology of Enceladus and the plume of water jets gushing from fractures near the moon's south pole.
Enceladus is 313 miles (504 kilometers) in diameter.


More NASA photos and illustrations of this moon are below.








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