Global ocean on Saturn's moon
Washington : There is a vast water
reservoir beneath the icy crust on Saturn's moon Enceladus - now dubbed as
"global ocean" - that is behind the fine spray of water vapour and
icy particles NASA's Cassini spacecraft has observed for years.
Researchers found that the magnitude of the geologically active moon's very
slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice
shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a "global ocean"
must be present.
Previous analysis of Cassini data suggested the presence of a lens-shaped
body of water, or sea, underlying the moon's south polar region.
However, gravity data collected during the spacecraft's several close
passes over the south polar region lent support to the possibility the sea
might be global.
"This was a hard problem that required years of observations, and
calculations involving a diverse collection of disciplines, but we are
confident we finally got it right," said Peter Thomas, Cassini imaging
team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in a statement.
Cassini is scheduled to make a close flyby of Enceladus on October 28, in
the mission's deepest-ever dive through the moon's active plume of icy
material.
The spacecraft will pass a mere 49 kms above the moon's surface.
Earlier, Cassini scientists analysed more than seven years' worth of images
of Enceladus taken by the spacecraft which has been orbiting Saturn since
mid-2004.
They found Enceladus has a tiny, but measurable wobble as it orbits Saturn.
Because the icy moon is not perfectly spherical -- and because it goes slightly
faster and slower during different portions of its orbit around Saturn -- the
giant planet subtly rocks Enceladus back and forth as it rotates.
The team plugged their measurement of the wobble, called a libration, into
different models for how Enceladus might be arranged on the inside, including
ones in which the moon was frozen from surface to core.
"If the surface and core were rigidly connected, the core would
provide so much dead weight the wobble would be far smaller than we observe it
to be," explained Matthew Tiscareno, Cassini participating scientist at
the SETI Institute in California.
"This proves that there must be a global layer of liquid separating
the surface from the core," he added.
The mechanisms that might have prevented Enceladus' ocean from freezing
still remain a mystery.
According to Thomas and his colleagues, tidal forces due to Saturn's
gravity could be generating much more heat within Enceladus than previously
thought.
The paper was published online in the journal Icarus.
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