Surf's Up!

Hey Space Placers!

Surf's Up on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Check out the spewing spray as caught by the Cassini spacecraft:

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft's direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. NASA JPL

From NASA's press release:

"The salt-rich particles have an "ocean-like" composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt water. The findings appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature."

"There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus's icy surface," said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and the lead author on the paper. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them."

Water, water everywhere is the rule of the Universe I do believe....we have found it on Mars, our own Moon, comets and perhaps other moons in the solar system.

Sky Guy in VA