Prof. Frank Postberg: Exploring the habitability of ocean moons by mass spectrometry

Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus harbours a global ocean, which lies under an ice crust but has a rocky sea floor. Through warm cracks in the crust a cryo-volcanic plume ejects ice grains and vapour into space providing access to materials originating from the ocean. Hydrothermal activity is suspected to be occurring deep inside the water-percolated porous rocky core and powered by tidal dissipation. Two mass spectrometers aboard the Cassini spacecraft frequently carried out compositional in situ measurements of vapor and ice grains emerging from the subsurface of Enceladus. In the first part of the presentation, the current knowledge about the habitability of Enceladus’ ocean - mostly based on Cassini’s in situ data - will be summarized. In the second part, the possibilities of future exploration of ocean worlds by space missions using mass spectrometry will be highlighted. In particular focusing on NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission that launched in October 2024 exploring the habitability of Europa’s subsurface ocean and ESA’s future flagship mission (L4) with the main goal to search for extant life on Enceladus. Missions, which have launched recently: ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) and NASA’s Europa Clipper.

Frank Postberg is Professor of Planetary Science at the Department of Earth Sciences at Freie University Berlin since 2018, where he also leads the Division of Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing. His research focuses on the origin, evolution, and habitability of planetary bodies, with a particular emphasis on icy moons and planetary dust. He is the recipient of a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant from the EU and a Heisenberg Fellowship awarded by the DFG.
Frank Postberg received his doctorate in physics from Heidelberg University and is widely acknowledged for his contributions to the study of potentially habitable environments beyond Earth.