NASA's Cassini mission is soon about to wind up with the craft whirling into saturn's environs. But just before the grand finale, scientists working on the mission have released the news that form of chemical energy that can support life is available on one of saturn's moons - Enceladus.
According to a press release of NASA, their paper, published in Science reports that hydrogen gas is pouring into the subsurface seafloor of Enceladus, due to hydrothermal activity. This hydrogen can be used by microbes, to produce food by means of chemical reactions combining it with dissolved carbon dioxide.
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Enceladus could contain all the necessary ingredients for life - water, a source of energy and essential elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen , oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur. Water is known to exist on this moon of saturn. In addition now, there is proof that a source of energy, namely hydrogen, exists. The remaining ingredients are also believed to exist there.
Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California is reported as having said,"Confirmation that the chemical energy for life exists within the ocean of a small moon of Saturn is an important milestone in our search for habitable worlds beyond Earth."
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