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Complex organic molecules were discovered from one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, adding to its potential to support life, researchers said Wednesday.
The Cbadini spacecraft flew for the first time in 2005 from a data collection mission on Saturn that will be badyzed for years to come.
A team led by Frank Postberg and Nozair Khawaja of the University of Heidelberg in Germany said to have identified fragments of large organic molecules in ice grains ejected from geysers by cracks in the icy exterior from the moon. "This is the first ever detection of complex organic compounds from an extraterrestrial aquatic world," Postberg said in a statement posted on the European Space Agency's website
. Data collected earlier this month showed organic compounds on the surface of Mars and seasonal fluctuations in atmospheric methane, which is one of the strongest evidence that the land neighbor has been able to maintain.
The fragments are much bigger. These large molecules can only be created by complex chemical processes, including those related to life, says ESA.
"This is the most recent of a long series of discoveries made by Cbadini that painted Enceladus as a potentially habitable aquatic world, but even so that indicates that Enceladus may have conditions that could allow life, organic compounds can also come from other sources, such as meteorites.
Postberg said the fragments could come from hydrothermal activity "In my opinion, the fragments we found are of hydrothermal origin, having been treated in the hydrothermally active core of Enceladus: in the high pressures and warm temperatures that we expect there, it is possible that complex organic molecules "
The Cbadini Joint Mission between NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency ended in 2017.
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