Water has been undeniably confirmed by NASA in one of Saturn's moons known as Enceladus. The observations that led to the confirmation were made by the Cassini spacecraft that was launched in 1997. Speculations on the existence of water on the icy moon had been around for a very long time now but the hypotheses were wrong about the scale of the ocean.
It was previously thought that an ocean would be found in the poles of the moon. However, what was discovered is a subsurface ocean that covers the entirety of the moon's surface under a shell of ice, The Verge reported.
The data used from Cassini involves observing the wobble of the moon's orbit relative to Saturn. This seemingly minor detail differentiates it from a satellite that is solid or frozen all the way to the core. According to the NASA website,
"Cassini scientists analyzed more than seven years' worth of images of Enceladus taken by the spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004. They carefully mapped the positions of features on Enceladus - mostly craters - across hundreds of images, in order to measure changes in the moon's rotation with extreme precision."
"As a result, they found Enceladus has a tiny, but measurable wobble as it orbits Saturn. Because the icy moon is not perfectly spherical - and because it goes slightly faster and slower during different portions of its orbit around Saturn - the giant planet subtly rocks Enceladus back and forth as it rotates."
The painstaking process to arrive at this conclusion adds to the wealth of knowledge already collected regarding the presence of water in distant worlds. Also, Cassini alone has discovered three new moons of Saturn, gotten close-up images of Phoebe, another Saturn satellite, landed a probe on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and many other flybys of other celestial bodies around the gas giant, io9 reported.
Check out the video of the discovery here:
