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Ingredients for
Life at Enceladus

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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California Institute
of Technology

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[ ♪ ]

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In 2015 NASA's
Cassini spacecraft

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made the deepest dive ever

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through a plume of gas and ice

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spraying from the south pole
of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

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[ ♪ ]

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A Cassini science instrument
"sniffed" the plume

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and detected hydrogen.

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Hunter Waite, Ion and Neutral
Mass Spectrometer Team Lead

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Southwest Research Institute:

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The instrument acts
like a human nose

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analyzing the smell,
so to speak,

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or the composition of the
gases in the environment.

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There was a significant amount
of molecular hydrogen.

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What makes this
hydrogen important?

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The existence of
molecular hydrogen,

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at least within the
Earth's ocean system,

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is a... like a food source.

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It's candy for microbes.

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They eat the hydrogen,

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they turn it into methane.

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And with our findings we
were able to not only

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find out that there
was H2 in the system,

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but to examine the chemistry
that's associated with

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that process of taking hydrogen
and turning it into methane.

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Cassini previously discovered
there's a salty, global ocean

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under Enceladus' icy crust

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and that hot ocean water
was coming into contact

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with a rocky sea floor.

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Here on Earth the hydrothermal
systems known as white smokers

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have water-rock
interactions that lead to

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the release of
molecular hydrogen

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in a similar fashion to,

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apparently, what's going
on at Enceladus.

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Life requires three
primary ingredients

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Liquid water. Source of energy.
Right chemical ingredients.

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This is just the final
step that shows

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that there's molecular
hydrogen being produced

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by these same
hydrothermal processes.

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And that molecular hydrogen
has the chemical energy

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to support microbial systems
in the interior ocean.

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It's not demonstration
of finding life,

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but it shows the potential
for the existence of life

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in this interior ocean.

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory