Saturn's Watery Moon
Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus has an ocean of liquid water, the size of Lake Superior.
Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus appears to have a very large ocean of liquid water, tens of kilometres below its icy surface. The Cassini Spacecraft - which has been orbiting Saturn and studying the planet, its rings, and its moons - detected a gravitational anomaly near the South Pole of Enceladus during its three fly-bys of the moon. This suggested, according to Dr. David Stevenson, the Marvin Goldberger Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology, that there was a large amount of dense liquid water under a thick crust of ice. The ocean is thought to be roughly the size of Lake Superior, which is relatively quite large, as Enceladus is only 500 km in diameter. Enceladus now joins the list of bodies in the solar system where life might be possible.
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