‘Stunning discovery’ says life possible on Saturn’s moon. Hunt for extraterrestrials gets major boost

Humans are curious to find life outside planet Earth and they launch new programmes and missions for the same. The long hunt for extraterrestrials in our solar system just got a massive boost as according to scientists, a Moon of Saturn has everything needed for life.

Scientists discovered that phosphorus, a key building block of life, lies in the ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

They used data collected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Cassini mission and found that phosphorus was locked inside salt-rich ice grains ejected into space from Enceladus.

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The study was published on Wednesday (June 14) in the journal Nature, and a report was also published on the official website of NASA. Notably, Cassini started exploring Saturn and its rings and moons in 2004, it was burned up in the planet's atmosphere when its mission ended in 2017.

Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn and is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, which makes it one of the most reflective bodies of the solar system.The outer surface is said to be wrapped in an ice crust, but the inner one is an ocean. Some scientists have claimed that the ocean could be a home for alien life making the moon most likely hope for finding nearby extraterrestrial life.

As mentioned, Enceladus has a subsurface ocean, and water from that ocean erupts through the cracks of icy crust surface as geysers at its south pole. It created a plume, which eventually feeds Saturn’s E ring with icy particles. The E ring is a faint ring outside of the brighter main rings.

NASA said that Cassini flew through the plume and E ring numerous times and scientists found that Enceladus' ice grains contain a rich array of minerals and organic compounds linked to life as we know it.

Christopher Glein of the Southwest Research Institute, one of the paper's co-authors, said: "This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology. We have found abundant phosphorus in plume ice samples spraying out of the subsurface ocean."

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Why is phosphorus key element for life?

NASA said in its report that phosphorus, which is the least abundant of the essential elements necessary for biological processes, hadn't been detected until now.

It is a building block for DNA, which forms chromosomes and carries genetic information and is present in the bones of mammals, cell membranes, and ocean-dwelling plankton. According to NASA's report, phosphorus is also a fundamental part of energy-carrying molecules present in all life on Earth.

As quoted by NASA, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, said, "We previously found that Enceladus' ocean is rich in a variety of organic compounds."

Postberg, who led the new study, further said, "But now, this new result reveals the clear chemical signature of substantial amounts of phosphorus salts inside icy particles ejected into space by the small moon's plume. It's the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth."

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