{"id":225433,"date":"2025-11-19T05:33:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T11:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/supercomputer-models-revise-enceladus-ice-loss"},"modified":"2025-11-19T05:33:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T11:33:31","slug":"supercomputer-models-revise-enceladus-ice-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/supercomputer-models-revise-enceladus-ice-loss","title":{"rendered":"Supercomputer Models Revise Enceladus Ice Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/supercomputer-models-revise-enceladus-ice-loss2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe mass flow rates from Enceladus are between 20 to 40 percent lower than what you find in the scientific literature,\u201d said Dr. Arnaud Mahieux.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>How much ice is Saturn\u2019s moon, Enceladus, losing to space when it discharges its interior ocean? This is what a <a href=\"https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1029\/2025JE009008\">recent study<\/a> published in the <em>Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets<\/em> hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated whether Enceladus\u2019 plume environments, including discharge rates, temperatures, and ice particle sizes could be determined strictly from observational data. This study has the potential to help scientists develop new methods for exploring icy bodies, especially those like Enceladus that could harbor life within its liquid water ocean.<\/p>\n<p>For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to analyze data obtained from NASA\u2019s now-retired Cassini spacecraft, which intentionally burned up in Saturn\u2019s atmosphere in 2017 after running low on fuel. This was done to avoid potentially contaminating moons like Enceladus with microbes from Earth and interfere with potential life there. During its journey at Saturn and its many moons, Cassino both discovered and flew through the plumes of Enceladus, which are at the moon\u2019s south pole and emit large quantities of water ice and other substances into space from its subsurface liquid water ocean. It\u2019s the amount of water and ice these plumes discharge that have intrigued scientists, and the results were surprising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe mass flow rates from Enceladus are between 20 to 40 percent lower than what you find in the scientific literature,\u201d said Dr. Arnaud Mahieux. How much ice is Saturn\u2019s moon, Enceladus, losing to space when it discharges its interior ocean? This is what a recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,48,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-particle-physics","category-supercomputing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}