Saturn's icy moon Enceladus harbors essential elements for life
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[June 15, 2023]
By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) - High concentrations of phosphorus, an essential element for
all biological processes on Earth, have been detected in ice crystals
spewed from the interior ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus, adding to its
potential to harbor life, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The discovery was based on data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft,
the first to orbit Saturn, during its 13-year landmark exploration of
the gaseous giant planet, its rings and its moons from 2004 to 2017.
The findings were published by a German-led international team of
scientists in the journal Nature and announced by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) outside of Los Angeles, which designed and built the
Cassini probe.
The same team previously confirmed that Enceladus' ice grains contain a
rich assortment of minerals and complex organic compounds, including the
ingredients for amino acids, associated with life as scientists know it.
But phosphorus, the least abundant of six chemical elements considered
necessary to all living things - the others are carbon, oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur - was still missing from the equation
until now.
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"It's the first time this essential element has been discovered in an
ocean beyond Earth," the study's lead author, Frank Postberg, a
planetary scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said in a JPL
press release.
Phosphorus is fundamental to the structure of DNA and a vital part of
cell membranes and energy-carrying molecules existing in all forms of
life on Earth.
The latest study stems from measurements taken by Cassini as it flew
through salt-rich ice grains ejected into space from geysers erupting
from the subsurface ocean beneath Enceladus' frozen crust at its south
pole.
The spacecraft gathered its data during passes through a plume of ice
crystals itself, and through the same material that feeds Saturn's faint
"E" ring with icy particles outside the planet's brighter main rings.
The interior ocean discovered by Cassini has made Enceladus - about
one-seventh the size of Earth's moon and the sixth largest among
Saturn's 146 known natural satellites - a prime candidate in the search
for places in our solar system beyond Earth that are habitable, if only
to microbes.
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![](../images/061523PIX/news_k23.jpg)
A mosaic image of Saturn's moon
Enceladus, composed from high-resolution pictures captured by NASA's
Cassini spacecraft during a 2005 flyby, shows the long fissures in
the moon's icy crust at its south pole that allows water from the
subsurface ocean to spew into space. NASA/JPL/Space Science
Institute/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Sep/05/images/ads/current/stclara_lda_SPONSOR_090519.png)
Another is Jupiter's larger moon Europa, which also is believed to
harbor a global ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface.
One notable aspect of the latest Enceladus discovery was geochemical
modeling by the study's co-authors in Europe and Japan showing that
phosphorus exists in concentrations at least 100 times that of
Earth's oceans, bound water-soluble forms of phosphate compounds.
"This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support
life in Enceladus' ocean," said co-investigator Christopher Glein, a
planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio,
Texas. "This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology."
Still, scientists stressed that the presence of phosphorus, complex
organic compounds, water and other fundamental building blocks of
life are evidence only that a place such as Enceladus is potentially
habitable, not that is inhabited. Life, either past or present, has
not been confirmed anywhere beyond Earth.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jun/15/images/ads/current/napa_sda_HEROES_2023.png)
"Whether life could have originated in Enceladus' ocean remains an
open question," Glein said.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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