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The European Research Council (ERC) has announced that it will support planetary scientist Dr. Nozair Khawaja with an ERC Consolidator Grant, worth just under two million euros, to research Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn. Khawaja will use the grant to investigate the habitability of this moon as part of the research project AIMS (Analogue Icy Moon Simulations). Enceladus, a moon with a subsurface deep liquid water ocean that orbits Saturn, is widely considered one of the most promising targets in the outer solar system in the search for extraterrestrial life.
This ERC grant will enable Khawaja and his team to simulate the conditions in Enceladus’ subsurface ocean, providing insight into whether life could be detected if it exists there. The researchers hope to gain knowledge that could be used to design and aid future space missions.
About the AIMS Project
Icy moons are currently the running favorite among scientists in the race to find evidence for extraterrestrial life. There are many moons in the solar system, but Enceladus, a small moon orbiting Saturn, is of particular interest due to the ocean lying just beneath the thick icy crust of the moon’s surface. Fractures in the crust at Enceladus’ south pole allow material from the depths of the moon’s ocean to be ejected into space in a plume of ice grains and gas.
The Cassini-Huygens mission, carried out by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency between 1997 and 2017, was able to collect and analyze some of this material from Saturn’s rings as well as during flybys of Enceladus. The AIMS project looks to better understand the processes taking place under the surface of the icy moon itself. With the help of equipment such as a hydrothermal reactor and an ocean evolution reactor, Khawaja and his team will simulate the geochemical and geophysical processes that occur in Enceladus’ core and also in the depths of its ocean. “Our aim is to understand the chemical evolution of organic, inorganic, and maybe even biogenic material. This information will not only help scientists better interpret the data gathered during the Cassini mission, but will also provide a basis of knowledge upon which future missions to Enceladus and other icy moons (e.g., Jupiter’s Europa) can expand,” says Khawaja.
About Dr. Nozair Khawaja
Dr. Nozair Khawaja is an expert in the composition of interstellar and interplanetary dust particles. One of his main research interests is the habitability of subsurface oceans on icy moons such as Europa and Enceladus.
He currently works as a researcher at the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart, where he is involved in the DESTINY+ Dust Analyzer (DDA) project. The DDA is an instrument for the in situ analysis of cosmic dust particles. Khawaja’s research in this context focuses on the detection of organic molecules in cosmic dust.
As principal investigator of a project at Freie Universität Berlin, Khawaja is leading an experiment that simulates high pressure and high temperature reactions similar to the conditions that prevail in Enceladus’ subsurface ocean, in addition to his responsibilities as a lecturer at Freie Universität. He is also affiliated as a co-investigator of the BioSigN project related to the survival of microorganisms under extreme conditions on the International Space Station. He also worked for the future multinational Lunar Gateway mission as a Facility Definition Team member for ESA. Khawaja is also a member of the scientific team of the SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA), an instrument on board NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe, recently launched in October 2024 with the aim of studying Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. He consults on a wide range of projects within the field of planetary science.
Dr. Nozair Khawaja, Institute of Geological Sciences, Department of Earth Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Email: nozair.khawaja@fu-berlin.de and Institute of Space Systems, University of Stuttgart, Email: khawajan@irs.uni-stuttgart.de
http://List of all ERC Grants awarded at Freie Universität Berlin: https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/forschung/kommunikation/preise/erc/index.html
http://ERC news page: https://erc.europa.eu/news
The European Research Council (ERC) has announced that it will support planetary scientist Dr. Nozai ...
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