The ocean beneath Saturn's moon Enceladus lies under kilometers of ice, but some of its contents do reach the surface. Jets near the south pole spray out water vapor and icy particles, offering a way to investigate the hidden ocean without drilling down to it.
The challenge is knowing which material preserves the most useful clues. A new laboratory study points to a possible target: salt crystals that trap tiny pockets of water as they grow during freezing.
Liam Perera of Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom and colleagues found these pockets inside natron, a sodium carbonate mineral expected to form on Enceladus. Their findings, published in Communications Earth & Environment, suggest that the crystals could preserve information about the ocean's chemistry—and potentially traces of life, if any exists there.\
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