Water on Saturn Moon

Last week's Science had leading stories on one of Saturn's moons Enceladus from the Cassini spacecraft mission. The introduction to the stories include:

The flybys show that Enceladus' south polar landscape is still active today and is being resurfaced by cryovolcanism and fresh snowfall. An underground heat source lies beneath a surface grid of "tiger stripes": a parallel set of linear trenches stained with dark organic material. From these warm vents, water vapor, ice, and dust particles are lofted in a spectacular plume, like spray from a Yellowstone geyser.

Scientists present evidence that the southern pole of Enceladus is a "hot spot" and within this area a watery ocean could exist. Jeffrey Kargel comments on the papers:

If a wet domain exists at the bottom of Enceladus' icy crust, like a miniature Europan ocean, Cassini may help to confirm it. Might it be a habitat? Cassini cannot answer this question. Any life that existed could not be luxuriant and would have to deal with low temperatures, feeble metabolic energy, and perhaps a severe chemical environment. Neverthess (sic), we cannot discount the possibility that Enceladus might be life's distant outpost.

A press release is available from Cassini Imaging Central Laboratories for Operations. (Thanks to the Boingboing link.)