NASA Dives Deep into the Search for Life

Off the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island and more than 3,000 feet beneath the ocean surface lie the warm, bubbling springs of a volcano — a deep-sea location that may hold lessons for the search for extraterrestrial life.

Here, NASA and its partners are blending ocean and space exploration, with a project called SUBSEA, short for Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog. Lessons learned in both fields will be mutually beneficial and could help design future science-focused missions across the solar system.

Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa are thought to have liquid oceans and hydrothermal activity under icy crusts. Locations on Earth with key similarities to future deep-space destinations are called analog environments. SUBSEA’s target, the springs emerging from a volcano forming the next Hawaiian island, called the Lō`ihi seamount, is an analog for these ocean worlds

Continued...
Source

Credits: NASA-GSFC/SVS, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Southwest Research Institute

Artist rendering showing an interior cross-section of the crust of Enceladus, which shows how hydrothermal activity may be causing the plumes of water at the moon’s surface.

Source / Image Courtesy

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Dramatic jets of ice, water vapor and organic compounds spray from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus in this image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in November 2009.

Source / Image Courtesy

Enough heat to power hydrothermal activity inside Saturn’s ocean moon Enceladus for billions of years could be generated through tidal friction if the moon has a highly porous core, working in favour of the moon as a potentially habitable world.

Hydrogen found in plumes on Saturn's moon Enceladus

SubSea workings