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Loading contentEnceladus is an icy moon of Saturn that vents plumes of water ice from its south pole.
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Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, vents water-ice plumes from its south-polar region that feed Saturn's E ring, indicating a subsurface liquid-water ocean.
Source: NASA Science · Public domain (US Government work)
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NASA
NASA (n.d.). Enceladus — NASA Solar System Exploration. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/
@misc{cite:nasa-moon-enceladus,
title = {Enceladus — NASA Solar System Exploration},
organization = {NASA},
year = {n.d.},
url = {https://science.nasa.gov/},
note = {NASA overview of Enceladus.}
}How Enceladus connects across Asteria Star — scientific, cultural, and astrological links are kept separate.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and is known for its prominent ring system.
Cassini–Huygens was a NASA–ESA–ASI mission launched in 1997 that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 and delivered the Huygens probe to the surface of its moon Titan.
Four parallel fractures across the south pole of Enceladus from which giant plumes of water vapour and ice erupt into space — fed by the moon's subsurface ocean.
The icy moons with liquid-water oceans beneath their shells — Europa, Enceladus, and Titan — now the most promising places to search for life in the Solar System, targets of the Europa Clipper and Dragonfly missions.
The one requirement every known form of life shares — a liquid solvent for its chemistry. The habitable zone is defined by where a planet could hold liquid water on its surface, but subsurface oceans extend the possibilities far beyond it.
The elements and molecules life is built from — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, and complex organic chemistry. Titan has a rich organic chemistry, and Enceladus's plumes carry organic molecules from its ocean.
A layer of liquid water beneath an icy shell, kept warm by tidal heating and in contact with a rocky seafloor. Europa and Enceladus have them; they are the leading places to look for life beyond Earth, and the target of the Europa Clipper mission.
'Ice volcanism' — the eruption not of molten rock but of water, ammonia, or methane from the interior of a cold, icy world. Enceladus jets plumes of water ice into space, and Triton has erupting geysers; the erupted material is these worlds' equivalent of lava.
A world with a large body of liquid water — most securely the global oceans hidden beneath the ice of moons like Europa and Enceladus, and possibly some water-rich exoplanets. Ocean worlds are among the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth.
Amalthea is a small, reddish inner moon of Jupiter orbiting closer to the planet than the Galilean moons.
Ariel is a moon of Uranus and the brightest of its major satellites.
Callisto is the outermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter and is heavily cratered.
Charon is the largest moon of the dwarf planet Pluto, roughly half Pluto's diameter.
Deimos is the smaller and outer of the two natural satellites of Mars.
Dione is an icy moon of Saturn marked by bright wispy fractures across its surface.
Facts on this topic will be cited from these primary and reference sources.
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
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Orbital data, ephemerides, and small-body parameters for planets, asteroids, and comets.