Possible salty ocean hidden in depths of Saturn moon

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided strong evidence that Saturn’s moon Enceladus harbours a salty ocean below its icy shell, a discovery that offers exciting possibilities in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Following a flyby of Saturn’s enigmatic moon in 2005 that revealed jets shooting out of the moon’s so-called tiger stripes at the south pole, scientists have speculated about the presence of a water reservoir hidden at depth within the moon’s interior . The jets contain water vapour, gas and tiny grains of ice and dust, and shoot hundreds of kilometres into space.