PIA19656-SaturnMoon-Enceladus-Ocean-ArtConcept-20150915

Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability (ELSAH) is an

astrobiology Astrobiology (also xenology or exobiology) is a scientific field within the List of life sciences, life and environmental sciences that studies the abiogenesis, origins, Protocell, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the univ ...

concept mission proposed in 2017 to NASA's

New Frontiers program The New Frontiers program is a series of space exploration missions being conducted by NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the ...

to send a spacecraft to

Enceladus Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn and the 18th-largest in the Solar System. It is about in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. It is covered by clean, freshly deposited snow hundreds of meters thick, ...

to search for

biosignature A biosignature (sometimes called chemical fossil or molecular fossil) is any substance – such as an element, isotope, molecule, or phenomenon – that provides scientific evidence of past or present life on a planet. Measurable ...

s and assess its

habitability Habitability is the adequacy of an environment for human living. Where housing is concerned, there are generally local ordinances which define habitability. If a residence complies with those laws, it is said to be habitable. In extreme environ ...

. The Principal Investigator is Christopher P. McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

, and the managing NASA center is

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC ...

. No details of the mission have been made public, but observers speculate that it would be a plume-sampling orbiter mission.Back to Saturn? NASA Eyes Possible Return Mission as Cassini Ends
Mike Wall. ''Space''. 17 September 2017. The two finalists, announced on 20 December 2017, are

Dragonfly A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of dragonflies are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threat ...

to Titan, and

CAESAR Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war. He ...

(Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return) which is a sample-return mission from comet

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (abbreviated as 67P or 67P/C–G) is a Jupiter-family comet. It is originally from the Kuiper belt and has an orbital period of 6.45 years as of 2012, a rotation period of approximately 12.4 hours, and a maximum velo ...

.NASA's New Frontier Mission Will Search For Alien Life Or Reveal The Solar System's History
Elana Glowatz, ''IB Times''. 20 December 2017. Although ELSAH was not selected for launch in this instance, it received technology development funds to prepare it for future mission competitions. The funds are meant to develop techniques that limit spacecraft contamination and thereby enable life detection measurements on cost-capped missions.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability Enceladus New Frontiers program proposals Proposed NASA space probes Proposed astrobiology space missions

See also

References