It is called Enceladus, and is the first space object to show signs of water. The hot question amongst the space enthusiasts these days, ever since the discovery of the signs of a vast ocean beneath the surface of Enceladus, is about the possibility of life on moon.

In a new image captured by Cassini spacecraft, Saturn’s night side gives a rather eerie feeling because of the pitch black darkness in the shadow caused due to complete absence of air, which would have otherwise scattered light.

“These findings add to the possibility that Enceladus, which contains a subsurface ocean and displays remarkable geologic activity, could contain environments suitable for living organisms”, said John Grunsfeld astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The spacecraft is making several close final flybys of moons this year as it enters the last phase of its mission. Through observing the wobble of Enceladus’ orbit relative to Saturn, Cornel University researchers have determined that the moon is not frozen to its core and that there exists a global ocean on Enceladus, according to NASA’s website. Theoretically, Enceladus allows multiple complex chemical reactions, just like Earth.

Luciano Iess, who was the study’s lead author, said that habitable environments come from completely unexpected places from the solar system.

A past analysis of data received form the spacecraft suggested that a lens-shaped water body, or a sea was present underneath the moon’s southern polar region.

The paper proposes that Cassini’s gravity measurements reveal a porous rocky core. Researchers say that the water reservoir of the moon comes in direct contact with the rocks above.

Two years from now, on September 15, Cassini will run out of thruster fuel and plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn shortly after 22 tricky orbits through the planet’s ring of rocks. They carefully mapped the positions of features on Enceladus, mostly craters, across hundreds of images, in order to measure changes in the moon’s rotation with extreme precision. Research teams will be getting together to compare their different models and see if the findings hold.

Matthew Tiscareno, participating scientist for the Cassini project from SETI Institute; co-authored the paper and said, “If the surface and core were rigidly connected, the core would provide so much dead weight the wobble would be far smaller than we observe it to be”. Only one thing remains a mystery, and that is how it was possible for Enceladus’ interior ocean to stay liquid.