Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus Harbors Essential Elements For Life

Researchers have discovered high concentrations of phosphorus in ice crystals emitted from Saturn's moon Enceladus, enhancing its potential to support life. The findings, based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, suggest that Enceladus may possess the necessary elements for life. Reuters reports: The discovery was based on data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the first to orbit Saturn, during its 13-year landmark exploration of the gaseous giant planet, its rings and its moons from 2004 to 2017. The same team previously confirmed that Enceladus' ice grains contain a rich assortment of minerals and complex organic compounds, including the ingredients for amino acids, associated with life as scientists know it. But phosphorus, the least abundant of six chemical elements considered necessary to all living things -- the others are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur -- was still missing from the equation until now.

'It's the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth,' the study's lead author, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said in a JPL press release. One notable aspect of the latest Enceladus discovery was geochemical modeling by the study's co-authors in Europe and Japan showing that phosphorus exists in concentrations at least 100 times that of Earth's oceans, bound water-soluble forms of phosphate compounds. 'This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus' ocean,' said co-investigator Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. 'This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology.' 'Whether life could have originated in Enceladus' ocean remains an open question,' Glein said.

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