SATURN MOONS MAY SUPPORT LIFE

Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun, is home to a vast and unique satellites — 53 plus 9 awaiting official confirmation
But its two satellites Enceladus and Titan are different in many aspects to all other satellites.
Christiaan Huygens discoveed the first known moon of Saturn. The year was 1655 and the moon is Titan and Enceladus was discovered discovered by William Herschel in 1789.

The condition of Enceladus and Titan appear right for supporting life, Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker said.

ENCELADUS

Using data from Cassini mission, scientists found that a global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of moon. Cassini observed warm fractures where evaporating ice evidently escapes and forms a huge cloud of water vapor over the south pole.

In 2015 they shared results that suggest hydrothermal activity is taking place on the ocean floor. NASA believes with its global ocean and internal heat Enceladus may support life.

TITAN

At 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across, Titan is the solar system’s second-largest moon. Titan hides its surface beneath a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, but Cassini’s  instruments have revealed that Titan possesses many parallels to Earth — clouds, dunes, mountains, lakes, and rivers. Titan’s atmosphere is approximately 95 percent nitrogen with traces of methane. While Earth’s atmosphere extends about 60 kilometers (37 miles) into space, Titan’s extends nearly 600 kilometers(10 times that of Earth’s atmosphere) into space.These parallel conditions make Titan suitable for life.

Spilker said that discoveries that Cassini made about Saturn’s moon made a paradigm change in how scientists approach search alien life. Before Cassini, scientists thought that the planets were the best place to look for sign of life. But Cassini had shown that certain moons could be candidate for such search.