ArticleScience advances2024
How to identify cell material in a single ice grain emitted from Enceladus or Europa.
Article in Science advances, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cassini CDA observes compositional segregation of Enceladus' ice grains from slow freezing and fragmentation of oceanic spray.Science advances · 2026Article
- Protonation-Induced Chemical Transformations in Mass Spectrometry: Implications for Detecting Complex Organics on Icy Moons.ACS earth & space chemistry · 2026Article
- Ammonia as a parameter shaping habitability on icy moons.FEMS microbes · 2026Review
- Detection of organic compounds in freshly ejected ice grains from Enceladus's ocean.Nature astronomy · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Icy moons like Enceladus, and perhaps Europa, emit material sourced from their subsurface oceans into space via plumes of ice grains and gas. Both moons are prime targets for astrobiology investigations. Cassini measurements revealed a large compositional diversity of emitted ice grains with only 1 to 4% of Enceladus's plume ice grains containing organic material in high concentrations. Here, we report experiments simulating mass spectra of ice grains containing one bacterial cell, or fractions thereof, as encountered by advanced instruments on board future space missions to Enceladus or Europa, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer onboard NASA's upcoming Europa Clipper mission at flyby speeds of 4 to 6 kilometers per second. Mass spectral signals characteristic of the bacteria are shown to be clearly identifiable by future missions, even if an ice grain contains much less than one cell. Our results demonstrate the advantage of analyses of individual ice grains compared to a diluted bulk sample in a heterogeneous plume.
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