The search for life in space continues and now it seems that scientists are turning their attention to Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. This might come as a surprise for some but this moon has a lot of things going on when it comes to the possibility of hosting life. Aside from its water-rich geysers, it also has an interesting chemistry – possibly life-giving. Likened to Europa, one of Jupiter's largest moons, Enceladus can possibly have a vast body of water beneath its cracked surface.
The possible venture toward Enceladus is known as the Enceladus Life Finder or ELF, one of the 24 concepts submitted in early 2015 to NASA's Discovery Program that pursues highly-focused but low-cost missions to various destinations in the solar system.
"We think we have the highest chance of success of getting an indicator of [alien] life for really any mission at this point," said planetary scientist and physicist Jonathan Lunine, the ELF concept principal investigator from Cornell University.
NASA will be trimming down the number of applicants sometime next month. From this finalist pool, a winner will be selected in September next year. But Lunine and his team are confident that they are able to put a strong contender in the contest.
However, not everybody shares their optimism.
"Who is going to approve a sample-return mission if we're not sure the stuff in the plumes is worth bringing back to a terrestrial lab?" Brent Sherwood of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was quoted by Space.com. "These are very hard decisions for decision makers to make when there are a lot of zeros after the dollar signs."
Sherwood manages the Innovation Foundry of JPL which basically does the legwork behind all space science missions pursued by the robotic space exploration center.
