mission concepts to search for evidence of life on Mars, Europa, and Encel-- Enceladus . Enceladus . Yes. Thank you.By the end of the talk, you'll know the name very well.
But my favorite place is actually in Enceladus . Enceladus is a tiny moon.Maybe you know of it because it was in the news recently.
I'll tell you in a second why. Enceladus is a tiny moon.It's about the diameter between here and LA.
Right now, we have no indication that there is other life in the solar system, but it could be lurking in this subsurface ocean on the satellites of Enceladus and Europa. It could be lurking on subsurface Mars someplace-- maybe in a subsurface cave, or some niche on Mars.
mission. So Titan is very interesting, very alien. But my favorite place is actually in Enceladus . Enceladus is a tiny moon.
But it's unique in the sense that it has these active geysers coming out of the surface. This is an actual picture of Enceladus taken by the Cassini mission. And in the south pole of the moon, you can see here a picture center at the South Pole, there are these features here, features on the surface.
Also shrimp and other stuff. We don't expect shrimp on Enceladus , but the microbes would be enough. They would be fine.
There is meteorites from Earth on Mars. Even places like Europa and Enceladus , there is a very small but still existing probability that life could be transferred between them.
Some people say enchilada. And you see that from the surface of Enceladus this plume of material coming out. Now, Enceladus has an icy crust but a liquid interior.
And you see that from the surface of Enceladus this plume of material coming out. Now, Enceladus has an icy crust but a liquid interior. And the Cassini spacecraft measured organic molecules coming out in that gas.
But all those things are good. So just as you've heard about Europa and Enceladus as possible homes for life underneath the ice, we really have to add Pluto to that list now.
In my case, it's caves, and rock overhangs, and things like that. But even rugged terrain on the surface of Enceladus , for example, or Europa.
So you've heard about the potential subsurface ocean on Europa. You've heard about the pressure water on Enceladus , and a number of icy bodies in the outer solar system. But on Titan, it's even more important at say.
to put on this spacecraft. And the spacecraft is going to go to a moon of Saturn called in Enceladus . Some people say enchilada.
And the Cassini spacecraft measured organic molecules coming out in that gas. So as Chris says, it's almost like Enceladus has put up a sign saying "life, free samples." And so what they'd like to do is fly a spacecraft-- there we go-- through that plume, and put a life meter on board, and tell us, is there life there or not?
And it also detected silica grains. The silica has already been linked to hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Enceladus ocean. So this would be a cross-section of the moon with the ice shelf and the plumes in the southern hemisphere.
There is meteorites from Earth on Mars. I would actually go as far as to say that life on Europa and Enceladus would probably also trace back, if it turns out they exist
So we get to-- after that, we turn this the spacecraft off, spin it up, and pray. But to give you a sense, Enceladus is one of the moons of Saturn.
Currently, he conducts field investigations in the most extreme deserts on Earth, provides scientific advice for the maturation of instruments of space exploration, and helps develop mission concepts to search for evidence of life on Mars, Europa, and Encel-- Enceladus . Enceladus . Yes. Thank you.
It's the end of the mission. But through the lifetime of the mission, we've been able to-- NASA's been able to fly that spacecraft through the plumes of Enceladus multiple times and study the chemistry of those plumes.
So recently our team at NASA Ames in collaboration with Goddard Space Flight Center and the APL laboratories at Johns Hopkins University, we proposed a mission to do precisely that, to return to Enceladus and search for evidence of life in the plume materials coming out of the South Pole Now, if that mission gets selected by NASA, it's going to make it there somewhere, sometime in the mid-2030s.
Two of them are symbolized here through these images. So on the left, we've got an image of the geysers erupting from the subsurface of Enceladus , one of the outer moons in the solar system, and so it represents our search for life in the solar system.
And of course, for us right now, since we're not going to be able to get out beyond the solar system anytime soon we're most interested in trying to find life here in our own neighborhood, places like Mars, and some of the outer moons or outer planetary moons like Europa, Enceladus , and Titan. So a little bit about me and how I got to where I am.