JWST Enceladus Findings (IMAGE)

Southwest Research Institute

JWST Enceladus Findings

Caption

SwRI Lead Scientist Dr. Christopher Glein was part of a team that found phosphorus, a key building block for life, from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s small moon, Enceladus. Liquid water erupts from the moon’s subsurface ocean, forming a plume that contains grains of frozen ocean water. Some of these ice grains go on to form Saturn’s E ring. The team analyzed Cassini spacecraft data from ice grains in the E ring, which revealed fingerprints of soluble phosphate salts from Enceladus’ ocean

Credit

Cassini Imaging Team/SSI/JPL/ SWRI/ Freie Universität Berlin

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