Scientists Discover Water on Saturn Moon

A tiny Saturn moon has made a big splash at JPL. The Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs on the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.

Cassini is the first spacecraft to explore the Saturn system from its orbit. Since entering Saturn's orbit on June 30, 2004, the spacecraft has sent data and images of not only the planet's rings but also of its many moons.

High-resolution Cassini images showed icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at a high speed. It had a similar look to Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park.

"We call this 'Cold Faithful'," said Linda Spilker, Cassini deputy project scientist at JPL. She is pleasantly surprised by the discovery on Enceladus. "The moon is one thousandth as big as our moon and has one, one-hundredths of Earth's gravity," Spilker said.

Scientists suspect the moon may have something to do with an outer ring of Saturn called E-Ring. Spilker feels water helps to create the E-Rings by shooting out of the geyser, freezing, going into space and then orbiting around Saturn.

Scientists have no idea what other secrets may be lying on or under the surface of the moon. But the discovery of liquid water means the conditions are now there for life.

Cassini will not have another close fly-by of Enceladus until 2008, but this discovery has spurred discussion on more missions. If data shows that the images are of liquid water then exploration has just begun.

"This could be one of the biggest discoveries of the decade," Spilker said.