Frictional heat powers hydrothermal activity on Enceladus

The Heidelberg University research group led by planetary scientist Assistant Professor Frank Postberg participated in the investigation.

In 2015, the researchers had already shown that there must be hydrothermal activity on Saturn’s moon.

Icy volcanoes on Enceladus launch huge jets of gas and icy grains that contain fine particles of rock into space.

A detector on the Cassini space probe was able to measure these particles. They originate on the seafloor more than 50,000 meters below the moon’s ice shell, which ranges in thickness from three to 35 kilometers.

Using computer simulations and laboratory experiments, the scientists discovered signs that deep below the rock and the water interact — at temperatures of a least 90°C. freezing.

Without it, the ocean would completely freeze in less than 30 million years.

Postberg conducts research at the Klaus Tschira Laboratory for Cosmochemistry.

The laboratory is part of the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University. It is funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation.

The aim of the Cassini-huygens mission, a joint project of NASA, ESA, and Italy’s ASI space agency that began in 1997, was to gain new insights into the gas planet Saturn and its moons.

The Cassini space probe began orbiting Saturn in 2004. The mission concluded in September of this year when the probe entered Saturn’s atmosphere. The latest research results were published in the journal ‘Nature Astronomy’.

sciencedaily.com Surface, ocean and core of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The illustration shows the ice shell, which is thinner at the Polar Regions, with the ocean underneath.