Q&A with Jonathan Lunine on Enceladus’ prospects for life

Scientists crunching data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft believe Saturn’s moon Dione has a liquid ocean buried 60 miles under a thick icy shell, potentially adding to a growing list of ocean worlds in the frigid outer solar system.

Rushing past Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus at dizzying speed, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft took its first pictures of the captivating object’s sunlit north pole last week, revealing cracks in the moon’s frozen crust and crater fields extending dozens of miles across.

Andrew Driesman is project manager for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, leading a team of engineers and operators in charge of the first mission to fly through the sun’s atmosphere.