March 9 (Bloomberg) -- The surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus is composed mostly of water ice and there may be a cold ocean beneath that holds some form of life, according to studies of images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft last year.``Any life that existed could not be luxuriant and would have to deal with low temperatures, feeble metabolic energy and perhaps a severe chemical environment,'' said Jeffrey Kargel of the hydrology and water resources department at the University of Arizona in Tucson. ``Nevertheless we cannot discount the possibility that Enceladus might be life's distant outpost.''
Images show a plume of gases and water spouting from the moon's southern pole, similar to the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park in the western U.S., said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team and an atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology.
Europa is a lot closer and it too has a liquid water ocean beneath the surface