Let us drink from the fountains of Enceladus

James Oberg NBC News space analyst

The discovery of active water geysers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus is exciting on many levels. It drives home the startling new recognition that most of the oceans of the solar system are not on Earth but are on other worlds, all (so far as we know) way out beyond the asteroid belt.

And it raises the tantalizing thought, already growing in intensity in the last decade or two, that these oceans — just like the deep oceans of Earth — may not be the sterile, boring empty voids scientists once thought. We’ve been amazed by the teeming biochemistry around deep ocean vents on Earth, and this may be only a foretaste of future amazements when we get access to otherworldly oceans.

Enceladus has now offered, on a space platter, the easiest-so-far way to examine directly the composition of such oceans. We don’t have to drill or melt our way through a hundred miles of an outer ice shell, as on Jupiter's moon Europa, or fight our way down through and back up through a thick atmosphere such as found on Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

We can go out there to Enceladus and pick up the samples in deep space, delivered conveniently by the geyser system that appears to be driven by the same heating process — gravitational flexing — that created the Enceladus liquid water pools in the first place.

The astonishingly successful Stardust mission shows the way. During a seven-year voyage, the Stardust spacecraft flew through a comet’s dusty haze and brought back samples now being studied by planetary scientists. Initial indications are that the materials caught by the aerogel collectors consist of 20 percent or more of organic molecules, probably produced by purely chemical processes but fascinating nonetheless as new clues to the early history of life on Earth and on any other world sprinkled with comet dust.

An aerogel-equipped spacecraft could be dispatched to the Saturn system to make repeated passes over Enceladus (the geysers don’t seem to be permanent features) while opening Stardust-like collection grids. Bonus passes through the upper atmosphere of Titan and the outer rings of Saturn might also be possible. And we may get even more potential targets as the Cassini probe that discovered these wonders continues to explore.

The mission would be harder and longer than Stardust, but not discouragingly so. With a nuclear power source, the probe — named Starfount or Starspring or some such — could take 15 to 20 years to make the round trip, including perhaps the first-ever Jupiter flyby on an inbound trajectory. An opportunistic collection phase through the plumes of sulfur volcanoes on Io, another of Jupiter's moon, may not be out of the question.

NASA could conduct this mission, or the European Space Agency (which has already dispatched a 15-year mission to orbit and land on a comet), or Japan (whose Hayabusa asteroid mission serves as stirring example of bold innovation), or even a reborn Russian space program (with its unique space nuclear power experience) — or an alliance of elements from these and other spacefaring parties.

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