Analyzing the space environment of Saturn's moon Enceladus to probe its interior
- 1Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
- 2Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
Saturn's moon Enceladus is a moon generally considered to possess all necessary conditions for being a habitable planetary body. The Cassini spacecraft passed Enceladus on more than 20 close flybys within the time span 2005 to 2015. In our study, we analyze the measurements obtained during these flybys to investigate the time-spatial structure of Enceladus space environment. Despite no known deviations of Saturn's internal magnetic field from azimuthal symmetry, we show that the fields around Enceladus still contain time-variable components. Within the complex magnetic field environment caused by Enceladus' plumes, we subsequently search in Cassini measurements for signatures consistent with induced fields in order to probe the interior structure of Enceladus.
How to cite: Saur, J., Duling, S., Grayver, A., and Szalay, J. R.: Analyzing the space environment of Saturn's moon Enceladus to probe its interior, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-1212, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-1212, 2024.