These plumes originate from a salt-water reservoir, according to published online by the journal Nature.“We discovered that the plume is stratified in a composition of ice,” said Frank Postberg , an astrophysicist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. “And the lower you go, the more salt-rich ice grains you find.”
Dr. Postberg and his collaborators analyzed samples of ice particles from the plumes gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
The analysis found that salt-rich particles make up more than 99 percent of the solids ejected in Enceladus’s plumes.
The researchers theorize that there are actually two reservoirs connected to the plumes. The first is a salt-water reservoir close to the moon’s surface that is directly feeding the plumes.
Five years ago, scientists discovered that Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, had geyserlike plumes spewing water vapor and ice particles.
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