It's 'very likely' hydrothermal vents on Enceladus could be habitable to Earthlike microorganisms.
The icy crust enveloping Saturn's moon Enceladus has long fascinated astronomers. Evidence collected by NASA and the European Space Agency's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft suggests the shell could be hiding a massive subsurface ocean made up of briny water underneath it — which, tantalizingly, could potentially harbor life.
The team constructed mathematical models to see if methanogenesis could account for the data collected by Cassini. Their conclusion: microbial hydrothermal vent activity — or processes that would involve extraterrestrial microorganisms — could explain the methane detected by Cassini. Most of this methane is released by microorganisms that use the heat as a source of energy, turning carbon dioxide into methane.
"In summary, not only could we evaluate whether Cassini's observations are compatible with an environment habitable for life, but we could also make quantitative predictions about observations to be expected, should methanogenesis actually occur at Enceladus' seafloor," Ferriere said in the statement.