Ocean Hidden Inside Saturn's Moon

Ocean Hidden Inside Saturn's Moon

By Jeanna Bryner

“Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet for an ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn's Enceladus, suggesting it could join the exclusive club of watery moons in our solar system.

The salty water is likely feeding jets of water-ice that spurt from the moon's south polar region. Such plumes were first reported in 2005, and ever since, astronomers have suspected a liquid ocean might lie beneath the icy shell of Saturn's sixth largest moon.

The new finding, published in the June 25 issue of the journal Nature, could bump this diminutive world — measuring 310 miles (500 km) in diameter (about the width of Arizona) — into a class that includes Jupiter's Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

In addition, the water and other key life ingredients such as organic material found in the plumes, could provide a suitable environment for life precursors, said lead researcher Frank Postberg of the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.”

Continued at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090624-enceladus-ocean.html

 You know what I think?  This will solve the Martian water crisis.  100-200 years from now, we'll be using this moon, Enceladus, as the main water supply for a Mars Colony.  I think we'll have a robotic bucket brigade, pulling the water off the moon in oil-tanker-sized spaceships, which at its size must have very little gravity.  Eventually, we'll nudge the whole ball of slush over there...maybe even drop it ON MARS...gently.