--- title: "James Webb Catches Saturn’s Moon Squirting" description: "One of Saturn's weirdest moons has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope spewing a gigantic plume of water vapor." date: "2023-05-31" modified: "2023-05-31" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/james-webb-saturn-moon-squirting" categories: - "Astronomy" - "James Webb Space Telescope" - "Moon" - "NASA" - "Space" tags: - "enceladus" - "james webb space telescope" - "saturn" - "the digest" --- # James Webb Catches Saturn’s Moon Squirting ![One of Saturn's weirdest moons has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope spewing a gigantic plume of water vapor.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Squirtle Aqua Jet! One of Saturn's weirdest and most fascinating moons has been caught by the James Webb Space Telescope spewing a gigantic plume of water vapor thousands of miles out from its icy surface and reader, we're living for it. As [NASA notes in a new blog](), Saturn's small, watery moon Enceladus is no stranger to these kinds of outbursts. But until the JWST pointed its uber-sensitive scientific instruments at it, a plume of this magnitude had never been captured. Enceladus is notably tiny, at just 313 miles across soaking wet — which it [increasingly seems to be]() — making it just four percent the size of our Earth. One can imagine the surprise at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, then, when they detected a plume shooting off it that spanned more than 6,000 miles, dwarfing the tiny moon and making up the distance it takes, as NASA notes, from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires. "When I was looking at the data, at first, I was thinking I had to be wrong," Goddard's Geronimo Villanueva, the lead author of a [recent paper published in the journal *Nature Astronomy*]() on the never-before-documented phenomenon, said. "It was just so shocking to detect a water plume more than 20 times the size of the moon." ## Life-Like The rate of the plume was also of particular interest to the researchers, as Webb was able to detect that it was gushing out at a whopping 79 gallons *per second.* That's thin coverage spread over 6,000 miles, of course, but NASA notes that it's enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in a few hours. Enceladus itself is a pretty big deal because, [as NASA discovered back in 2021](), its unique hydrothermal vents could "very likely" host microorganisms like those we have on Earth, making it one of the most prominent potential sites for extraterrestrial life in our Solar System. The agency's [Cassini mission](), which was the first to ever orbit Saturn, compiled troves of data on the iconically ringed planet and found that the plumes Enceladus shoots off contain the right compounds for [the building blocks of life](). It's no surprise why NASA is so invested in taking a closer look at this moon — and there's no doubt that this giant water spout was a pleasant surprise. **More on Saturn:** *[Saturn Is Sucking Up Its Rings]()* ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()