Ice Moon Station

Enceladus: Ice Moon of Saturn

Enceladus: an icy moon, shining bright, 790 million miles away. For 100 million years or more, Enceladus has been orbiting around the giant planet Saturn, completing the loop in less than a day and a half. Enceladus dwarfs in comparison to our own moon. Five of Saturn's moons outsize Enceladus: Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, and Tethys.

Enceladus awaits

Tidal energy provides warmth to Enceladus

Enceladus first entered the realm of human knowledge over 200 years ago. On August 28, 1789, Frederick William Herschel first sighted Enceladus. At the time, his telescope was largest telescope in the world. Starting in the early 1980s, our knowledge of the mysteries of this icy realm, Enceladus, exploded.

Struggling in an epic gravitational tug-of-war with its sibling moon Dione, heat generates beneath the surface of Enceladus' icy crust. Beneath Enceladus, hydrothermal energy churns and grinds, creating a subsurface ocean.

Enceladus with Saturn
Credit: Kevin Gill (CC BY-SA 2.0) 

Voyager and Cassini spacecraft flybys of Enceladus

Space probes were sent from Earth starting with Voyager 1 launched in 1977. Voyager 1 and the next mission, Voyager 2, flew past Enceladus, as they journeyed past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and 48 of their moons. Decades later another probe, Cassini left Earth seeking more information on this icy moon.

View of Saturn from Enceladus
Credit: NASA artist David Seal (Public domain)

Cassini reported back with details on jets of water vapor, over 100 geysers, spraying out over 440 pounds of material per second. Much of this ejected matter falls to the surface -- a rocky, salty, icy snow. This fallback coats the surface of Enceladus, keeping it the brightest shining solid object in the Solar System. The rest of the ejected matter may escape the gravity of the planet, joining up with material from other recent and ancient explosions, to form the E ring around Saturn. Future missions to Enceladus may tell us if life has ever existed here.

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