Subsurface sea hides below ice of Saturn moon
Gravity maps of Enceladus reveal liquid water ocean beneath satellite’s south pole
FROZEN Enceladus, a 500-kilometer-wide moon of Saturn, is blanketed in a thick sheet of ice. Salty water erupts through a network of fissures (blue) in the southern hemisphere. New measurements of the moon’s gravity reveal a subsurface ocean 30 to 40 kilometers beneath the south pole.
JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute, NASA