Enceladus’s icy geysers were first seen spewing from the moon’s south polar region in 2005 in pictures from the Cassini spacecraft. Cassini’s backlighted photographs—including the one above shot in October 2009—make the 300-mile-wide (500-kilometer-wide) moon appear to be rocket-propelled.
Further Cassini data have since shown that the active tiger-stripe fissures are warmer than the surrounding icy terrain, hinting that the jets are being driven by a subsurface liquid ocean. Cassini’s close flybys of the moon also revealed that Enceladus’s geysers may contain the chemical ingredients for life.
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