Saturn's moon Mimas may have an ocean — and a future spacecraft could find it

The case for a newborn ocean on Saturn's moon Mimas continues to build.

Research mapping the thickness of the world's icy crust not only provides a window for how old an existing ocean might be but also probes where the crust might be at its thinnest — the perfect spot for future missions to detect the ocean. At the same time, examination of Mimas' largest crater is providing further constraints on the age range of the potential ocean.

"When we look at Mimas, we don't see any of the things that we're accustomed to seeing in an ocean world," Alyssa Rhoden, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said last month at the joint Europlanet Science Congress-Division for Planetary Sciences meeting.

Fellow Saturnian moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon