page_title: Enceladus Life Finder
section_title: Mission concept
hierarchical_section_title: Enceladus Life Finder / Overview / Mission concept
caption_attribution_description: English: Composite map of south pole of Saturnian moon Enceladus.
context_page_description: Enceladus Life Finder is a proposed astrobiology mission concept for a NASA spacecraft intended to assess the habitability of the internal aquatic ocean of Enceladus, which is Saturn's sixth-largest moon and seemingly similar in chemical makeup to comets. The spaceprobe would orbit Saturn and fly through Enceladus's geyser-like plumes multiple times. It would be powered by energy supplied from solar panels on the spacecraft.
context_section_description: The Enceladus Life Finder (ELF) mission would pursue the implications of Cassini orbiter's 2005 discoveries of active jetting from, and existence of an ocean within, Enceladus. The mission concept would have the ELF orbiter fly 8 to 10 times over a period of 3 years through plumes of water launched above the south pole of Enceladus. The geysers could provide easy access for sampling the moon's subsurface ocean, and if there is microbial life in it, ice particles from the sea could contain the evidence astrobiologists need to identify them.  The Principal Investigator is Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
caption: Composite map of Enceladus's south polar region showing cracks dubbed 'tiger stripes' where the geysers are located.
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