Moon and Saturn

If you’re searching for life on another world, you don’t want to find life that’s hitchhiked from Earth. But preventing contamination isn’t easy. Over the past few decades, we’ve identified quite a few worlds in the outer solar system that could be habitable. These worlds are coated with frozen water. But they could have oceans of liquid water below the crust. Those oceans could supply the minerals and the energy needed for life. So scientists are especially interested in them. But they want to make sure that any life they find really is native. So every mission to these worlds goes through a careful process of sterilization. But building and launching a spacecraft requires hands-on contact by hundreds of people. They build the instruments, assemble the spacecraft, test it, and attach it to its booster. Much of the work is done in high-level cleanrooms. Along the way, the spacecraft and its components may be cleaned with chemicals, baked at high temperatures, or zapped with radiation – all to prevent Earthly “bugs” from catching a ride. One especially interesting target is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. It has a buried ocean, but some of its water shoots into space. Some of it falls back onto the surface – perhaps making it easier to find native life on this icy world. Saturn is close to the right of our own moon in early evening. It looks like a bright star. It’ll stay close to the Moon all night. Script by Damond Benningfield