The Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004 and for seven years was devoted to provide images of Enceladus. (NASA / JPL)
A team of NASA researchers found that on Saturn’s moon Enceladus there is an ocean between the crust of ice that covers the surface of the satellite and its rocky core . Using data collected by the Cassini spacecraft, scientists detected a strange behavior in the orbit of the moon, which led to that after seven years of analysis to conclude that the only possible answer is that there is a huge body of water below the ice.
The Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004 and for 7 years was devoted to provide images of Enceladus allowing to map some of the most important features of craters and the moon to determine the cause of variations in the orbit accurately as possible.
“This is a step beyond what We knew about the moon and shows the kind of profound discoveries we can do with long duration missions on other planets. Cassini is an example “said Carolyn Porco, leader of the imaging department of the Institute of Space Science and co-author of the discovery.
(Fajr Wayer)
The images provided by the spaceship Cassini also allowed to discover water vapor, ice particles and other organic molecules that emanate from fractures in the crust of ice located at the south pole of the moon. The full investigation and its details will be officially published this week in the next edition of the science journal Icarus.
Original article here
No comments:
Post a Comment