NASA has focused its gaze on the Jovian moon Europa, which is home to what is likely the largest ocean known to humans, in its efforts to find life somewhere in the solar system. The space agency is planning on launching two multi-billion-dollar missions to the ice-encrusted moon to see if they can find signs of life. However, some scientists think that Saturn’s moon Enceladus would be a better place to search. It is a small world and has a surface gravity just one percent of that on Earth, but it also has a subsurface ocean.
“I have a bias, and I don’t deny that,” says Carolyn Porco, one of the foremost explorers of the Solar System and someone who played a key imaging role on the Voyagers, Cassini, and other iconic NASA spacecraft, according to Ars Technica. “But it’s not so much an emotional attachment with objects that we study, it’s a point of view based on the evidence. We simply know more about Enceladus.”
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