Sentences with phrase «habitable moon»
A "habitable moon" refers to a moon or natural satellite of a planet that has conditions suitable for life to exist. It means that the moon has a livable environment, like water, an atmosphere, or a climate, where living organisms might be able to survive and thrive. Full definition
Perhaps there are temperate, habitable moons orbiting some giant exoplanets.
newscientist.com
Saturn Moon Enceladus Shows Off Its Moves for Cassini: Saturn's possibly habitable moon Enceladus seems to dance in a gorgeous new video captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
There may be systems where there are more habitable moons than planets,» Dad said during our interview.
JUICE will study any potentially habitable moons of Jupiter.
They decided to steer it toward a fiery death in Saturn's atmosphere primarily to protect Titan and Enceladus — to ensure that any Earth microbes that may have hitched a ride aboard Cassini never contaminate those two possibly habitable moons.
Artist's concept of a habitable moon orbiting a giant gas planet.
Objects: An unusual exoplanet pair Orbits: Circling two sun - like stars Plot twist: Chance for a habitable moon
Saturn's potentially habitable moons are the reason Cassini must meet a dramatic end.
The mission team decided to sacrifice the spacecraft when it ran out of fuel, rather than risk a collision with one of those potentially habitable moons and contaminating it with any still - lingering earthly microbes.
Finding an Earth - size, habitable moon would have been a coup, but it is possible that Neptune - size moons might be more common, according to the new study, led by Columbia astrophysicists Alex Teachey and David Kipping, which was posted to the preprint server arXiv and has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.
Planet - sized moons orbiting huge gas giants could provide havens for life around other stars, but in order to be habitable these moons would need to be larger and more massive than Mars.
Its atmosphere might contain water, however, and such a large planet could also sport a habitable moon [source: ESA].
Throughout the study, these habitable moons outside the Goldilocks zone are referred as super-Europas.
While the choice to terminate Cassini was made in 2010 and was based largely on the hypothetical existence of both Cassini microbes and habitable moons, «the discoveries on Enceladus only served to reinforce the wisdom of this decision,» Dyches said.
If exomoons are shown to be potentially habitable, it would open another avenue for biology; habitable moons might even outnumber habitable planets.