Thanks to the Cassini spacecraft's observations, NASA scientists believe the sub-surface ocean on Saturn's moon Enceladus encompasses the entire world.
According to BBC News, underneath Enceladus' icy crust is a massive global ocean separating it from the moon's rocky core. The researchers first noticed Enceladus was orbiting with a wobble far too exaggerated than expected.
"If the surface and core were rigidly connected, the core would provide so much dead weight the wobble would be far smaller than we observe it to be," study co-author Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini participating scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., said in a press release. "This proves that there must be a global layer of liquid separating the surface from the core."
Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004, BBC News noted, and one thing that quickly became evident was that one of its moons was spouting vaporized water through its surface. NASA was able to confirm this discovery when getting a better look at Enceladus, but it immediately inspired them to search for a sort of sub-surface ocean.
"This is a major step beyond what we understood about this moon before, and it demonstrates the kind of deep-dive discoveries we can make with long-lived orbiter missions to other planets," co-author Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at Space Science Institute (SSI) in Boulder, Colo., said in the release. "Cassini has been exemplary in this regard."
