Snehasikta Gouda

Year: 2018-19

Snehasikta Gouda

School: Khallikote Junior College

Grade: 11

City: Odisha


" Life began on earth 3.6 billion years ago. Since life has begun on Earth, all living organisms have been searching the three basic requirements i.e., food, water and shelter. It is true for all living beings, starting from the simplest archaebacteria to the most complex beings like us, the Homo sapiens sapiens .Whenever we go away from home we keep in mind our three basic requirements.

When astronauts go to space, they take care of these three basic needs. In addition to these they take oxygen with themselves. When the astronauts will go to some distant place in the universe to search for extra-terrestrial life, they will give more importance to those places where they can find the three vital things.

I think we should search for extra-terrestrial life in Enceladus. It has been found that Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice. Over 100 geysers have been identified. In 2014, NASA reported that Cassini found evidence for a large south polar subsurface ocean of liquid water with a thickness of about 10km. This means that there is water on Enceladus. Cryovolcanoes near its south pole shoot geyser-like jets of water vapor, molecular hydrogen and other volatiles, including NaCl crystals and ice particles, into space.

This shows that molecular hydrogen is present on Enceladus. Now, we have found water and hydrogen. We know that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. So, oxygen is surely found on Enceladus as without it water cannot be found there. Thus, we have got water and oxygen. Its surface is covered with fresh and clean ice which is similar to the Arctic, the Antarctic and Greenland. So, we can expect to find some kind of life on Enceladus which may be similar to those that can be found in the poles of the Earth. Archaebacteria can live in the harshest conditions.

Therefore, there is some chance that we can find some archaebacteria on Enceladus which may be more evolved than those found on Earth. This moon is revolving around my mind. This makes me believe that we are not alone in the universe. Thus, I think we should send unmanned missions to Enceladus as we have sent Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity to Mars. In this way we can learn about it in a better way. Then we can plan to send there manned missions. For this, we need very tough and fast moving rockets. We can use lasers to destroy the asteroids coming on its path.

We can focus the laser at one point. In this way, we shall be able to either destroy the asteroids or change their path. Exploring Enceladus might be a challenge for the humankind, but we can overcome this challenge through sincerity, hard work, determination and above all creativity because, “The difficult is done at once, the impossible takes a little longer.” -Slogan of the US Armed Forces.

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