 Many would advocate that when it comes to people it's not what's on the outside that counts It's what's on the inside of them that matters the most and Enceladus a moon of Saturn is turning out to be an excellent Real-life example of this idea now observations Performed by the Cassini spacecraft in 2015 show us that Enceladus is icy surface is actually a shell It's completely detached from its rocky core That means that Enceladus has a global ocean underneath that crust of ice But that ice is actually not thick enough to be the sole reason for the ocean remaining liquid Tidal heating works wonders at a place like Jupiter's moon Europa But there's likely not enough of that kind of energy to be the sole reason for keeping Enceladus's ocean liquid that flexing of the ice Generating the heat would actually only be good for keeping Enceladus's ocean liquid for about 30 million years So a very curious study that was conducted by the University of Nantes in France Took a look at the core of Enceladus, which is probably made of a combination of sand and gravel Now that water interacting with it actually generates friction as it moves the sand and gravel and that Movement of the sand and gravel was able to generate a sufficient amount of heat to keep Enceladus's oceans liquid even till now So the oceans of Enceladus are likely as old as the solar system itself now We already know that there are areas of intense heat on Enceladus primarily at the South Pole of Enceladus Which is where water plumes are prominent and that molecular hydrogen and Silica's that have been found in those water plumes by the instruments on board a Cassini during flybys indicate that not only is Their geothermal activity in this area But it's actually very similar to what we find with hydrothermal events at the bottoms of Earth's oceans And not only that that kind of activity is currently active at Enceladus time to fire up those budgets and engineering divisions for a return to the Saturnian system for a proper Investigation so if you like this make sure to check out our show from last week Orbit 10.42 where we talked about the commercial crew program and some upcoming Milestones and spaceflight for 2018 and of course don't forget to watch our live show every Saturday at 1800 coordinated Universal Time and don't forget to like and subscribe to tomorrow