One of the most promising targets for the search for life other than Mars in our Solar System is the tiny Saturn moon Enceladus. The Cassini mission to the Saturian system detected an active region on Enceladus where small water particles and gas containing organic materials were being flung into space from a region near the south pole known as the tiger stripes. This discovery indicated that there is very likely a liquid subsurface ocean heated through tidal interactions as Enceladus orbits Saturn. On Earth, whenever there is an energy source, liquid water and organics, there is life; this makes Enceladus one of the prime candidates for a search for life missions. In this presentation, we describe LIFE (Life Investigation For Enceladus) sample return concept from Enceladus in the search for evidence of life.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    LIFE: Enceladus Sample Return Mission Concept for Searching Evidence of Life


    Contributors:
    Tsou, P. (author) / Brownlee, D. E. (author) / McKay, C. P. (author) / Beegle, L. W. (author) / Spilker, L. (author) / Kanik, I. (author)

    Conference:

    Lunar and Planetary Science Conference ; 2011 ; The Woodlands, TX, United States


    Publication date :

    2011-03-07


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    ELF: Enceladus Life Finder Concept

    Reh, Kim / Cable, Morgan | NTRS | 2016


    Radioisotope power system-based enceladus smallsat mission concept: Enceladus express

    Bairstow, Brian / Riedel, Joseph / Lee, Young H. et al. | IEEE | 2017


    Radioisotope power system-based Enceladus SmallSat mission concept: Enceladus Express

    McCarty, Steven / Oleson, Steven / Spilker, Tom et al. | NTRS | 2017


    Defining Mission for Twin Exploration of Europa and Auxiliary Enceladus Sample Return

    Bohrey, Aayushi / Jain, Abhishek / Kumar, Ramesh et al. | TIBKAT | 2022


    Enceladus life finder

    Spilker, LInda J. / Lunine, Jonathan I. / Cable, Morgan L. | NTRS | 2017