Hyperion: Ingredients for Life Found On Saturn's Moon

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed for the first time surface details of Saturn's moon Hyperion, including cup-like craters filled with hydrocarbons.

This incredible discovery is leading scientists to speculate that the ingredients for life may be much more common in our solar system that previously believed. It may also indicate a more widespread possibility of basic chemicals necessary for life existing throughout the universe. Images of the brightest regions of Hyperion's surface also show frozen water that is crystalline in form, like that found on Earth.

"Of special interest is the presence on Hyperion of hydrocarbons – combinations of carbon and hydrogen atoms that are found in comets, meteorites, and the dust in our galaxy," said Dale Cruikshank, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the paper's lead author. "These molecules, when embedded in ice and exposed to ultraviolet light, form new molecules of biological significance. This doesn't mean that we have found life, but it is a further indication that the basic chemistry needed for life is widespread in the universe."

Hyperion, Saturn's eighth largest moon, has a chaotic spin and orbits Saturn every 21 days. The up-close view of Hyperion revealed a low-density body blasted by impacts over eons. Scientists believe that the spongy appearance of Hyperion is caused by a phenomenon called thermal erosion, in which dark materials accumulating on crater floors are warmed by sunlight and melt deeper into the surface, allowing surrounding ice to vaporize away.

"Most of Hyperion's surface ice is a mix of frozen water and organic dust, but carbon dioxide ice is also prominent. The carbon dioxide is not pure, but is somehow chemically attached to other molecules," explained Cruikshank.

Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer captured surprising compositional variations in Hyperion's surface. These instruments, capable of mapping mineral and chemical features of the moon, sent back data confirming the presence of frozen water found by earlier ground-based observations, but also discovered solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) mixed with ordinary ice in an extraordinary way.

Research of extremophiles on Earth is revealing that life exists on our planet in a wide variety of harsh and strange condition. This type of research is leading scientists to speculate that any planet or moon supplying the basic “ingredients of life”, could potentially harbor some form of biology.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

*This post was adapted from a news release issued by NASA/Ames Research Center.