NASA announces that Saturn's moon could support life

Several moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn are known to contain underground oceans, but Enceladus is the only one where scientists have found proof of an energy source for life.

"With this research we are making a big step forward to answering the question is there life out there", Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington, said during the press conference.

The hydrogen gas detection was made by the Cassini spacecraft, which NASA points out is unable to determine whether life exists in the elements it encounters.

There are three essential ingredients for life: water, a source of energy for metabolism, and a mixture of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur.

This graphic illustrates how Cassini scientists think water interacts with rock at the bottom of the ocean of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, producing hydrogen gas.

Professor David Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at The Open University, said: 'We have now got all the ingredients we need to support life on Enceladus. "It would be like a candy store for microbes", said Hunter Waite, lead author of the Cassini study, according to NASA. They found that plumed were bursting or were erupting from Europa, which is a moon of Jupiter. So far, the Cassini mission has show almost all those ingredients except phosphorus and sulfur in the ocean world.

Scientists also considered other sources of hydrogen from the moon itself, such as a preexisting reservoir in the ice shell or global ocean.

"We re looking in a way that we never thought possible before for environments in our solar system which may harbor life today".

Scientists say one of Saturn's outer rings was actually formed from hydrogen rich water and ice being released from Enceladus.

Cassini's mission ends in September, when the probe will descend into Saturn's atmosphere, sending back as much data as it can before it is destroyed by the heat and pressure.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected the presence of molecular hydrogen in water plumes erupting from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, the US space agency announced Thursday, suggesting that the distant world has nearly all the conditions necessary for life.

The second study of Europa is based on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, and is published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Hydrogen molecules were detected in vapour plumes emerging from cracks in Enceladus' surface. A spacecraft under development called the Europa Clipper, to launch sometime in the 2020s, could shed more light on the matter.