![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/jupiter-moon-europa-cross-section.jpg\")
Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\nEnceladus is a medium-sized moon of Saturn made up of a crust of water-ice and an ocean of liquid water below.<\/p>\n
The moon’s ocean is similar to those on Earth and is connected directly to Enceladus\u2019s rocky core.<\/p>\n
Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n
Water from Enceladus\u2019s ocean is emitted in large jets through cracks in the icy crust near the moon\u2019s south pole.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We know that this icy moon boasts water, heat and organics. Scientists have discovered it has complex chemistry too.<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/enceladus_geysers-9dff48f.jpg\")
An image of Enceladus captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, showing plumes of vapour bursting through Enceladus\u2019s icy crust. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SSI<\/p>\n
It could prove to be habitable, and is currently one of the best places in the Solar System to search for signs of life beyond Earth.<\/p>\n
Nozair Khawaja is a planetary scientist based at Freie Universit\u00e4t in Berlin exploring the habitability of icy moons.<\/p>\n
We spoke to him to find out more about this strange icy world, and why Enceladus is such a promising target in the search for life.<\/p>\n
The jets happen because Enceladus is orbiting a much larger body: Saturn.<\/p>\n Saturn\u2019s gravitational pull causes Enceladus to stretch<\/a>, compress and relax, which gives rise to an immense amount of friction.\u00a0<\/p>\n This friction is converted into heat, which causes interactions between the water and rock and hydrothermal vents at the bottom of Enceladus\u2019s ocean.<\/p>\n These vents in turn push material to the top of the ocean, where it bursts through the cracks as plumes of water vapour and ice grains.<\/p>\n The plumes can be enormous, reaching thousands of kilometres above the moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n We\u2019re searching for habitable places beyond Earth, places where there\u2019s evidence of past life or the possibility of future life.<\/p>\n We think that for a place to be habitable, it should meet three \u2018green lights\u2019 \u2013 and Enceladus meets them all.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first green light is liquid water must be present.<\/p>\n Secondly, an energy source is needed, which we think could be tidal heating.<\/p>\n Lastly, you need the right set of elements to form, support or sustain life: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and maybe sulphur, as well as organic molecules.<\/p>\n We have detected all of these elements on Enceladus.<\/p>\n We found new, complex organic compounds in ice grains in Enceladus\u2019s plumes.<\/p>\n To understand the significance of the discovery, we must look back at the Cassini space mission<\/a>, which was in the Saturnian system from 2004 to 2017.<\/p>\n During its lifetime, Cassini collected measurements from lots of ice particles from Enceladus\u2019s plumes Previously, we used that data to look at older ice particles sitting in Saturn\u2019s E ring, the second-outermost of its rings.<\/p>\n We knew these had been ejected from Enceladus\u2019s subsurface oceans, but that while they sat in the E ring (for months and years), they might have been changed by the effects of radiation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our new research looked at ice grains collected by Cassini just minutes after they were ejected from Enceladus.<\/p>\n We found two interesting things: the same organic compounds in both samples, meaning that those complex compounds in the E ring had the same origin \u2013 Enceladus\u2019s subsurface ocean; and new organic compounds that had never been seen before in ice grains ejected from Enceladus.<\/p>\n The bigger picture is that these organic molecules must also originate from Enceladus\u2019s ocean and they provide a complex picture of Enceladus\u2019s subsurface chemistry.<\/p>\n What we can say is that all three major keystones for life exist on Enceladus, which makes it a potential candidate for a habitable environment.<\/p>\n I would go a step further and say that, even if we don\u2019t discover any life there, better investigations of Enceladus will tell us something about what life might need.<\/p>\n For example, we will be in a better place to answer the question: if we have water, heat and organics, why isn\u2019t there life?<\/p>\n What are we missing?\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019re continuously exploring data from Cassini to understand more about Enceladus.<\/p>\n Enceladus is also the target for future missions; knowing what the payload of these missions should be \u2013 what instruments should be on board, what we might like to investigate \u2013 is also a target of our research.<\/p>\n There are also missions (NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper<\/a> and ESA\u2019s Juice<\/a>) to Jupiter\u2019s moon Europa, another candidate for exploring habitability, currently under way.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s a lot to look forward to.<\/p>\n This interview appeared in the December 2025 issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enceladus is a medium-sized moon of Saturn made up of a crust of water-ice and an ocean of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-254105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115791842284829792","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nozair](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Nozair-Khawaja.jpg\")
Credit: Tagesspiel
\nWhat causes Enceladus’s jets?<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/enceladus-ice-volcano-6936d75.jpg\")
This artificially coloured image of Enceladus shows the emission of dust fountains caused by cry-volcanic activity. Credit: NASA\/JPL\/Space Science Institute
\nWhy are scientists interested in Enceladus?<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/enceladus-plume-webb-ae13cd7-e1688564348959.png\")
A plume of water vapour emanating from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Geronimo Villanueva (NASA-GSFC). Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
\nWhat did your team discover?<\/strong><\/p>\n
and from the rings of Saturn.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/saturn-e-ring-enceladus-dd02d3c.jpeg\")
A 2006 observation of Saturn’s E ring by the Cassini spacecraft. The E ring is fed with icy particles via plumes erupting from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. The moon’s shadow is seen as a dark dot within the ring. Credit: NASA\/JPL\/Space Science Institute<\/p>\n![\"Jets](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/enceladus-cryovolcanism-2ab0b3b.jpg\")
Jets erupt through the icy global ocean on Enceladus that acts as a mantle.
\nWhat does that mean for the potential for life on Enceladus?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/enceladus-europa-life-social.jpg\")
Image of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Could the icy moons Enceladus and Europa host life beneath their frozen crusts? Credit: NASA\/JPL\/Space Science Institute
\nWhat\u2019s next for your team?<\/strong><\/p>\n