And now onto another moon - Saturn's moon Enceladus. Just as we wonder about Pluto's changing surface and Charon's canyons, this moon is believed to have seas below the surface that could harbor life. The image above from the Cassini spacecraft provides a full view of the beautiful surface of this distant moon.
NASA has more to say on this:
One possible mission being considered by NASA is called Enceladus Life Finder (ELF), which would entail a spacecraft flying through the moon's plume of surface material and returning the sample to Earth for further study. An intriguing idea that will tell us much more about what is happening on the moon.Do some surface features on Enceladus roll like a conveyor belt? A leading interpretation of images taken of Saturn's most explosive moon indicate that they do. This form of asymmetric tectonic activity, very unusual on Earth, likely holds clues to the internal structure of Enceladus, which may contain subsurface seas where life might be able to develop. Pictured above is a composite of 28 images taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in 2008 just after swooping by the ice-spewing orb. Inspection of these images show clear tectonic displacements where large portions of the surface all appear to move all in one direction. On the image right appears one of the most prominent tectonic divides: Labtayt Sulci, a canyon about one kilometer deep. The small magnitude of Enceladus' wobble as it orbits Saturn might indicate damping by a globally extending underground ocean layer.
