'Tiger stripes' on Saturn's moon Enceladus could reveal if its oceans are habitable
By Robert Lea published 19 hours ago
"We aim to continue to investigate ways we can use geophysical measurements to better understand the conditions which may enable life to form and evolve on Enceladus."
a close up view of an icy moon of saturn showing deep fissures along its surface
This close-up view of Saturn's moon Enceladus looks toward the moon's terminator (the transition from day to night) and shows a distinctive pattern of continuous, ridged, slightly curved and roughly parallel faults within the moon's southern polar latitudes. These surface features have been informally referred to by imaging scientists as "tiger stripes" due to their distinctly stripe-like appearance when viewed in false color. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
New research has revealed the sliding side-by-side motion along distinctive "tiger stripes" on Saturn's moon Enceladus is linked to jets of ice crystals that erupt from its icy shell. The findings could help determine the characteristics of this icy moon of Saturn's subsurface ocean and, thus, if Enceladus is favorable to life.
The tiger stripes of Enceladus consist of four parallel line fractures in the moon's south pole that were first observed by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2005. "Cryovolcanism" in this region blasts out ice crystals believed to originate from Enceladus' buried ocean from these fractures, causing a broad plume of material to gather over the south pole of the Saturnian moon.
Both the brightness of this plume and the jets that create it seem to vary in a pattern that lines up with the near 33-hour orbit of Enceladus around Saturn, the solar system's second most massive planet. This has led scientists to theorize that the activity of the jets increases as tidal stress acts upon the tiger stripes.
However, this theory can't explain why the jets of Enceladus peak in brightness hours after tidal stresses are at their maximum or why there is a second smaller peak seen shortly after Enceladus' closest approach to Saturn. A new numerical simulation of Enceladus' tidal stresses and the motion of its tiger stripe fractures identifies a phenomenon similar to that seen at the San Andreas fault, corresponding with the pattern of jet activity.
More:
https://www.space.com/enceladus-saturn-moon-tiger-stripes-habitability
