It looks like the popular geysers spotted on Saturn moon Enceladus are going through changes.
The geysers, found on the planets icy and ocean-harboring moon, were first seen by NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft in 2005.
New data showed that geysers blasting material from the subsurface ocean of Enceladus are having 30 to 50 percent less output.
Lead study author Andrew Ingersoll of Pasadena’s California Institute of Technology said this new finding does not necessarily mean the Saturn moon’s jets are shutting down, noting that no one knows exactly what is happening.
Ingersoll presented the latest discovery on Dec. 14 at the American Geophysical Union’s annual fall meeting.
After Cassini’s deepest venture into the vapor and ice plumes emitted on its southern pole back in Oct. 28, Enceladus surfaced as a main contender in the elusive search for life outside Earth.
Cornell University scientist Jonathan Lunine affirmed that it is indeed conducive to life. “This is really is a world with a habitable environment in its interior,” he said at the American Geophysical Union meeting held in San Francisco.
The plumes’ source, Enceladus’ subsurface ocean, exhibited chemical signs of water interacting with rocks – an extremely high pH solution, according to University of Toronto geochemist Christopher Glein.
And what could have led to the high pH? Glein pointed to geochemical reactions occurring between magnesium and iron-rich rocks in the moon’s core interacting with ocean water. This, Glein said, could still be taking place on Enceladus.
An output of this process is hydrogen gas production, though attempts of finding traces of hydrogen in the plumes have so far yielded mixed results. If confirmed, however, hydrogen’s presence could greatly impact the search for life beyond Earth.
Orbiting Saturn for over 11 years now, Cassini will perform its last flyby of the Saturn moon on Dec. 19.
The spacecraft will continue to observe Enceladus until September 2017), but from a much greater distance. At closest, it would be over four times farther away than the Dec. 19 flyby.
