Enceladus ticks all the boxes to be a habitable environment that could support life: the presence of liquid water, a source of energy, a specific set of chemical elements and complex organic molecules. A mission that takes measurements directly from the moon’s surface, seeking out signs of life, would offer Europe a front seat in Solar System science.

“Even not finding life on Enceladus would be a huge discovery, because it raises serious questions about why life is not present in such an environment when the right conditions are there,” says Nozair.

Notes for editors

‘Detection of Organic Compounds in Freshly Ejected Ice Grains from Enceladus’s Ocean’ by N. Khawaja et al. is published today in Nature Astronomy. DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02655-y

Lead author Nozair Khawaja conducted the research at Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Stuttgart, both in Germany. Frank Postberg is also affiliated with Freie Universität Berlin.

Cassini-Huygens was a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency. It comprised two elements: the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe.

Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) was led by the University of Stuttgart in Germany.

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