Marine Science Goes to Space

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https://eos.org/features/marine-science-goes-to-space

By Damond Benningfield, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Cassini discoveries added Enceladus to a growing list of possible ocean worlds in our own solar system—bodies with large amounts of liquid water hidden from view. Some of them could contain more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. And in addition to Enceladus, planetary scientists have counted at least one other member of the list, Jupiter’s moon Europa, among the ranks of the “possibly habitable.” “There could be life in our own solar system, and we may already have flown past it,” said Christopher German, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutionand a coleader of Network for Ocean Worlds (NOW), a NASA-funded effort to advance research on these intriguing bodies. “Instead of just a sci-fi thing, suddenly we have grounds for wondering if there’s life on these nearby worlds—places we have the technology to reach.” ...German said scientists have identified five “confirmed” ocean worlds beyond Earth: Jupiter’s moons Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede and Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan. That list could be just the tip of the planetary iceberg, however. “There are probably 20 candidates from places that haven’t been studied closely since the Voyagermissions of the 1980s,” German said....

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