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Enceladus as a potential oasis for life: Science goals and investigations for future explorations

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Abstract

Enceladus is the first planetary object for which direct sampling of a subsurface water reservoir, likely habitable, has been performed. Over a decade of flybys and seven flythroughs of its watery plume, the Cassini spacecraft determined that Enceladus possesses all the ingredients for life. The existence of active eruptions blasting fresh water into space, makes Enceladus the easiest target in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System. Flying again through the plume with more advanced instruments, landing at the surface near active sources and collecting a sample for return to Earth are the natural next steps for assessing whether life emerges in this active world. Characterizing this habitable world also requires detailed map** and monitoring of its tidally-induced activity, from the orbit as well as from the surface using complementary platforms. Such ambitious goals may be achieved in the future in the framework of ESA large or medium-class missions in partnership with other international agencies, in the same spirit of the successful Cassini-Huygens mission. For all these reasons, exploring habitable ocean worlds, with Enceladus as a primary target, should be a priority topic of the ESA Voyage 2050 programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LPG, Université Nantes/CNRS, Nantes, France

    Gaël Choblet & Gabriel Tobie

  2. Centrale Supélec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Arnaud Buch

  3. Charles University Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Ondrej Čadek, Marie Bēhounková & Ondrej Soucek

  4. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA

    Laura M. Barge, Mark Panning, Christophe Sotin & Steven Vance

  5. Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands

    Eloi Camprubi

  6. LATMOS, UVSQ/CNRS, Guyancourt, France

    Caroline Freissinet, Alice Le Gall & Cyril Szopa

  7. University of Idaho, Idaho, USA

    Matt Hedman

  8. Mullard Space Science Lab, London, UK

    Geraint Jones

  9. Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France

    Valery Lainey

  10. INAF-OAPD, Padova, Italy

    Alice Lucchetti

  11. JHU-APL, Laurel, USA

    Shannon MacKenzie

  12. IRSPS, Università d’Annunzio, Pescara, Italy

    Giuseppe Mitri

  13. Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Geologia, Università d’Annunzio, Perugia, Italy

    Giuseppe Mitri

  14. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA

    Marc Neveu

  15. University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, USA

    Francis Nimmo

  16. Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Karen Olsson-Francis

  17. Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Frank Postberg

  18. Universität Köln, Cologne, Germany

    Joachim Saur

  19. Oulu University, Oulu, Finland

    Jürgen Schmidt

  20. ELSI, Tokyo, Japan

    Yasuhito Sekine

  21. JAMSTEC, Yokosuka, Japan

    Takazo Shibuya

  22. ISAS/JAXA, Tokyo, Japan

    Tomohiro Usui

  23. Royal Observatory, Brussels, Belgium

    Tim Van Hoolst

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Choblet, G., Tobie, G., Buch, A. et al. Enceladus as a potential oasis for life: Science goals and investigations for future explorations. Exp Astron 54, 809–847 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-021-09808-7

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