ocean, by the way, covers the entire moon!
Enceladus was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel, the discoverer of the planet Uranus. Not much was known about this moon, until the Cassini mission. Once it was in orbit around Saturn in 2004, Cassini performed numerous flybys of this intriguing moon and discovered that it had a modern-day active geysers at its South Pole. It has an intriguing surface layout as well, nursing a region that looks millions of years old, which is contrasted by a relatively younger surface, crisscrossed by lines.
It was also recently found that it is the source for one of Saturn’s many rings- the E-ring. Enceladus is a really small moon. It’s as big as the British Isles! But, a recent find suggests that the entire moon’s subsurface may contain a 10 km thick ocean, making it a candidate for life.
While the chances of finding life on Enceladus are indeed remote, the discovery of liquid water on yet another solar system object (after Europa), suggests that liquid water might be common in the universe. After all, the solar system is tiny compared to the near 95 billion light years that is the observable universe!
This discovery is yet another great leap for science, which has taken amazing strides in the past few centuries. Only 400 years ago, one would have woken up thinking that the Sun , along with everything else, orbits the Earth, and that the Earth is the center of the universe! Will the pace of discovery ever slow down?
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