Enceladus: home of alien lifeforms?

Enceladus is little bigger than a lump of rock and has appeared, until recently, as a mere pinprick of light in astronomers' telescopes.

Enceladus is little bigger than a lump of rock and has appeared, until recently, as a mere pinprick of light in astronomers' telescopes. Yet Saturn's tiny moon has suddenly become a major attraction for scientists. Many now believe it offers the best hope we have of discovering life on another world inside our solar system...Yet the discovery of Enceladus's strange geology was a fairly tentative affair, says Professor Michele Dougherty of Imperial College London. She was the principal investigator for Cassini's magnetometer instrument. 'Cassini had been in orbit round Saturn for more than six months when it passed relatively close to Enceladus. Our results indicated that Saturn's magnetic field was being dragged round Enceladus in a way that suggested it had an atmosphere.' So Dougherty and her colleagues asked the Cassini management to direct the probe to take a much closer look. This was agreed and in July 2005 Cassini moved in for a close-up study. 'I didn't sleep for two nights before that,' says Dougherty. 'If Cassini found nothing we would have looked stupid and the management team might not have listened to us again.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/alien-life-enceladus-saturn-moon?newsfeed=true