Not long after NASA’s Cassini orbiter first reached Saturn in mid-2004, it found something spectacular. This was our first good look at the ringed giant since the Voyager mission in the 1980s. And Cassini saw that one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, was venting something into space.
Research went on to show that Enceladus’ mighty plumes, which can shoot up to 50 miles high, were mostly water—like a giant Old Faithful, pumping into space. The plumes were not only water, though, says science writer Matthew Francis. They contain other intriguing chemicals, like methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other more complex carbon molecules. “While hydrocarbons are pollutants on Earth (which create that lovely yellow smog over our cities), they also are naturally-occurring compounds that may have played a role in the early biochemistry of life on Earth,” Francis writes. Read more
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