One of the most intriguing, and least resource-intensive, ideas for searching for life in Enceladus’ ocean is to fly a probe through the geyser-like eruption, collecting samples and analyzing them for molecules that are the products of life. (NASA / Cassini-Huygens mission / Imaging Science Subsystem)

No, NASA Did Not Find Even ‘Hints Of Life’ On Enceladus

Finding the ingredients for life is a very different prospect than finding the products of life.

Perhaps the greatest quest in science today is to find life that originated beyond Earth. While searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have all come up empty, and our astronomical capabilities have not quite advanced to the stage where we can sniff it out in the atmospheres of planets around other stars, there’s a close-to-home possibility to consider. If one of the worlds in our Solar System contains life — past or present — we can discover it with today’s technology.

Many possibilities abound for where life might exist today, including beneath the surface of Mars, in the cloud-tops of Venus, and in the sub-surface ocean of a world like Jupiter’s moon, Europa. But one world in the Solar System stands out: Saturn’s moon Enceladus. With a liquid water ocean beneath its ice and geysers that shoot off hundreds of miles above the surface, the possibility of encountering alien life has never been more accessible.

This is a false-color image of jets (blue areas) in the southern hemisphere of Enceladus taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 27, 2005. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)