Year: 2018-19
Schools: Liceo Los Robles and Altamira School
Grade: 5 and 6
City: Maracaibo, La Conception, and Ciudad Ojeda
Target: Enceladus
Team leaders:
Marcelo Acevedo, Luis Ángel Faria Osorio, Diego Aponte,Nicolas Camargo, Victor Boscan.
Team members:
Santiago Serrano, Ernesto Pardi, Franco Alexander Villalobos, ,Jacobo Cruz, Nicola Fereira.,Tomas Acurero, Paolo Capelli, Ricardo Hernandez, Saul Castillo, Tomas Vega, Rene Carmona, Mattias Villalobos, Marcelo Villalobos, Maximiliano Delgado, Jose Andres Gonzales, Jose Vilchez (Liceo Los Robles).
Hermanas Rangel lunes (Altamira school).
"The Cassini spacecraft has confirmed since 2005 that below the icy cover (minus 201 deg Celsius) of this moon, the adequate temperature exists for there to be liquid water, gases and therefore opens the possibility that some very primitive microbial life forms might exist!
Enceladus’ surface is very white and clean, reflecting most sunlight. Apparently there are no craters, which indicates fresh renewal zones in its icy surface.
The spacecraft detected water jets containing salty elements, also organic based compounds, and all these is happening apparently only in its southern hemisphere where lots of cry vulcanism is going on, and more than 100 geysers have been detected!
Why?
Unfortunately we have already lost that magnificent spaceship called Cassini!! and the Voyagers just left our Solar System.
We must hope and support JPL/NASA to send another ship to Enceladus to continue investigations, but this time with a lander and a mini automated submarine, its obvious there is liquid water!
Why wait? We know that there is internal heating, some 16 Megawatt heating, a mystery, perhaps from gravitational tugs, ( 2:1 resonance with Dione) or perhaps another additional heat in its sub-surface yet to be identified!!
We have read that some type of “ Metanogenetics” might be going on in those deep lightless world, very similar as in our planet. The composition is similar to those of comets, besides the NaCl compounds. All this was confirmed by Dr. Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Director at who also reminded that geysers are constantly and intermittently functioning, at rates around 200 Kg/second, according to NASA, hydrogen gas was detected, most of its water vapor falls back as snow, but also a lot goes and supplies Saturn’s E ring, all first detected by Hubble Space Telescope, and functioning much in a similar way as in Yellowstone National Park.
That’s why we chose Objective Enceladus."
