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NASA is set to make a major announcement today about the discovery of a habitable environment on a moon of Saturn.
The discovery, to be published today in the journal Science and announced in a NASA press conference, relates to the ocean of liquid water that lies under 30 kilometres of ice on Enceladus, which at 500 km wide is among the larger of the ringed gas giant’s dozens of moons.
The spacecraft Cassini has been in Saturn’s orbit since 2004, and has paid special attention to the massive plumes of gases and ice that explode like geysers from Enceladus’s south pole, out of geological features known as “tiger stripes.”
The discovery involves the chemical analysis of those plumes by mass spectrometry from a device on Cassini, with an eye to demonstrating that Enceladus’s underground ocean might support the creation of hydrogen gas as water reacts with iron-bearing minerals in rocks. On Earth’s oceans, this same process is exploited by tiny organisms to make methane as an energy source, and those organisms are among the most ancient known to science.
The announcement will coincide with results from the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been looking for water on planets outside the solar system, and in particular for evidence that they contain primitive life, such as the unexpected creation of methane.
The announcement will stream live on NASA TV at 2 p.m. EDT and you can watch it below. The National Post will have live updates from the announcement.
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