Water Found on Saturn’s Moon

| | Vapor plumes on Enceladus, Courtesy Ciclops.org|

The Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of geysers on Enceladus, a strange, cold moon of Saturn. This discovery brings the total number of places in the known universe with liquid water to two: there and Earth. (Mars had liquid water long ago, and Jupiter’s moon Europa is only suspected of having a liquid ocean buried under ice.) Carolyn Porco, the always-enthusiastic Cassini imaging team leader, describes the findings thusly in her e-mail announcement:

We’ve written about Cassini twice in recent years: a preview of the mission as it arrived in July 2004 and an update on its incredible findings in April 2005. Perhaps it’s time for another look. —Michael Moyer