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Cassini Reanalysis Finds Fresh Complex Organics in Enceladus Plumes

A high-speed 2008 plume fly-through yielded pristine ice-grain spectra that reveal abiotic, biologically relevant molecules, sharpening the case for an ESA orbiter and lander.

© ESA
Icy on the outside but liquid below? A vast ocean is churning below the hard shell of Enceladus
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Overview

  • Published in Nature Astronomy, the study identifies newly detected organic fragments including aromatics, aldehydes, esters, ethers and alkenes, with hints of nitrogen–oxygen species.
  • Signals come from ice grains that hit Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer at about 18 km/s, enabling the first detailed chemistry from freshly ejected material rather than older E-ring grains.
  • The same organics seen in Saturn’s E ring are present in the fresh plume grains, confirming an origin in Enceladus’s subsurface ocean.
  • Combined with earlier detections of salts, hydrogen and phosphates, the results point to five of the six CHNOPS elements at Enceladus, with sulfur still unconfirmed.
  • Separate DSMC supercomputer modeling published Sept. 30 revises Enceladus’s plume mass-loss rates downward by roughly 20–40%, refining expectations for material available to future sampling missions.