The search for life may get an assist from the call of nature. Astronomers have been intrigued by jets of icy liquids, such as on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Now they might learn how to study such plumes from an unlikely source: space toilets.
Enceladus hosts an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface. That sea constantly vents water into space through cracks in its surface ice. (Jupiter’s moon Europa also hosts an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface. So it, too, may spew plumes. But if it does, those plumes are not as persistent.) Planetary scientists would like future spacecraft to scoop up samples of these plumes. That way they could test them for signs of life. But trying to model such space plumes in a lab on Earth is challenging.
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