What is #38: Enceladus?

I'm going to keep with the theme of moons in the Solar System in this series at least for a few more entries. I've covered the four Galilean moons of Jupiter and Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Today's moon is Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon.

 

 

 

 

NASA / JPL / SSI / Gordan Ugarkovic / Public domain

What makes Enceladus special? Well, it's certainly not its size. It is a large moon, but as the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, there are several other moons larger than it in our Solar System. Enceladus is special because it is covered in ice, opening up the possibilities of life of some form or using Enceladus as a resource for future human exploration in the Solar System.

In addition to a surface covered in ice, astronomers have observed geysers in real-time sending water high above the surface, as seen in the image below.

NASA/JPL/SSI / Public domain

Now that is cool! This is evidence of an active interior. It is not a dead moon if there is on-going geological activity we can detect. The close-up images we have of Enceladus are from Cassini, an amazing spacecraft that recently ended in 2017 after arriving at Saturn in 2004. At this time there is not a mission currently looking at Enceladus, but there are plans for a future mission to Enceladus to further study its very interesting surface. These missions are still in the early stages of planning, so it will be a decade or two before this happens. We'll just have to sit and be patient. :-)