Year: 2016-17
Grade: 5th and 6th
School: Liceo Los Robles
City: Maracaibo
Teachers: Ramon Azuaje and Pedro Medina
Target: Enceladus' Plumes
Team members:
Jose Ely Vilchez (team leader)
Juan Diego Bojola (team leader)
Ignacio Rincon
Jorge Cacique
Jesus Adan Rincon
Jose Andres Romero
Salomon Galiz
Salomon Añez
Fernando Novoa (team leader)
Diego Colls
Oscar Parraga
Sebastian Espinoza
Luis Angel Faria
Marcelo Acevedo (team leader)
Thomas Acurero (team leader)
Lucas Rodriguez
Daniel Delgado
Samuel Sandoval (team leader)
"Enceladus, a natural satellite of Saturn, has become the best candidate to harbor extra terrestrial life thanks to certain similarities with planet Earth, as observed through Cassini's cameras, orbiting in the Saturnian system since 2004 and observing water and ice plumes ejecting from its south pole at an almost constant rate and speed, giving thought for the possible existence of a hidden ocean under the ice coating of that moon, in its southern hemisphere, and with a mysterious partial atmosphere,(as we observed in the Von Karman lecture series), as explained by the JPL scientist Linda Spilker, giving therefore the famous "tiger stripes" name to a particular zone.
Our team has been watching JPL videos and conferences and we were amazed at the information on "hot spots" on certain areas, possibly due to tidal gravitational friction, or perhaps maybe some radioactive thermal emission from its original geographical formation. We would really like to emphasize picturing those plumes because, if there are any abyssal volcanoes down there, it might be possible for some type of marine life form to exist there. There must be a wide variety of temperatures in that moon, because we can see in the pictures that all 3 types of water phases are present, that is: solid, liquid (apparently) and gas (vapour).
We think that by zooming in on those "tiger stripes" surroundings, perhaps, just perhaps, and our team dreams on that fact, some type of "creature" could be photographed lying dead on its crevices. Or maybe even floating in the ice particles that go on to be part of Saturn's ring? Enceladus also should be further investigated after Cassini comes to and end, with a subsequent mission because that moon has all the ideal conditions to install there a large human colony, virtually with and endless supply of energy from below, and who knows? Possibly the purest water in all the solar system. As we heard in the Von Karman Lecture series, the "tiger stripes" always remain in the same spot, so it's possible that some type of permanent "greenhouse effect" might be occurring there locally. So that's why our team choose objective 1."
