The ice blasting from Saturn's moon Enceladus is stranger than scientists realized

Saturn's moon Enceladus is covered in ice, but beneath that frozen shell lies a global ocean. Near the moon's south pole, fractures in the crust release water vapor and ice particles into space. Those particles give scientists an unusual way to study an alien ocean without having to drill through kilometers of ice.

An international team that includes researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Institute of Science Tokyo has now investigated what happens to that ocean water as it moves from beneath the surface and eventually becomes the tiny ice grains detected in space.

Cassini Found Surprisingly Diverse Ice Grains

Between 2004 and 2017, the Cosmic Dust Analyzer on NASA's Cassini spacecraft measured the composition of individual ice particles in Saturn's E-ring. That ring is continually supplied with material erupting from Enceladus.