Europe wants to launch a life-hunting mission to Saturn’s icy ocean moon Enceladus

The European Space Agency (ESA) is setting the long-term goal of sending a spacecraft to Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus to answer key science questions and drive the development of new technologies.

Enceladus is one of the most intriguing moons in the solar system due to the discovery by NASA’s Cassini probe of plumes of water ice erupting from the moon’s south polar region. The find indicates geological activity on Enceladus, along with a subsurface ocean of liquid water — and perhaps even an environment capable of sustaining life.

ESA is now targeting a mission to study enigmatic Enceladus as part of its Voyage 2050, the agency’s long-term plan for space science activities, according to ESA officials at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) and Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) joint meeting, which was held in Helsinki in early September.

The Enceladus mission, though in its earliest stages, will need both an orbiter and a lander to answer major science questions, with the orbiter to be designed to sample material in the plumes emanating from the “tiger stripes” at the south pole.

An early mission configuration following first industrial studies calls for two launches of the largest variant of the Ariane 6 rocket, with spacecraft to dock in Earth orbit. Next, approval is needed at the ESA ministerial meeting in Bremen, Germany, in November, allowing a mission definition phase, leading to mission adoption in 2034 and a launch around 2042. The spacecraft would then arrive in the Saturn system in 2053, starting a tour of Enceladus and other moons, collection of plume material and preparation for a landing around 2058.

Jörn Helbert of ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) stated in a presentation at EPSC-DPS that, since March of this year, the ESA study team has been working with a newly selected payload working group and an expert committee to refine the science requirements and identify key technologies.

The Enceladus mission aims to advance European expertise in several scientific and technological fields, including in-orbit assembly, operating in extreme environments, landing technologies and novel scientific instrumentation, according to Helbert. He added that the development of these technologies will have wide-ranging applications beyond ESA’s space science program.

Helbert noted that Enceladus has three necessary conditions for supporting life as we know it: the presence of liquid water, a source of energy and a specific set of chemical elements. An answer to the question of whether or not life exists below Enceladus’s icy shell may, however, require decades of efforts in terms of planning, resources and innovation.