San francisco-nasa plans to dispatch a hulking nuclear-powered spacecraft to determine whether three of jupiter's icy planet-sized moons have the potential to harbor life.

旧金山---美国宇航局计划发送一艘巨大的核动力太空船，用以确定在木星的三颗行星大小、盖着冰层的卫星上是否有任何生命存在的可能。

youdao

Nasa's New Horizons probe is due to fly past the icy world and should get a good look at the moons.

预计美国宇航局的“新地平线”探测器将飞经这个冰冷的世界，将会好好看一看这颗卫星。

youdao

If the question is life - and that's one of the most profound questions we can ask, he says - the answer is almost certainly not Mars or an asteroid, but rather the icy moons orbiting distant planets like Saturn and Jupiter.

BBC: Is Nasa looking in the wrong place for life?

"One of the most fascinating aspects of Enceladus is that it's so very small as icy moons go, but so very geophysically active, " said Dr Bob Brown, from the University of Arizona, US, and team leader for Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Saturn moon delights and baffles

Since being demoted from planet to dwarf planet in 2006 we've actually discovered two new moons orbiting the icy sun satellite.

ENGADGET: Alt-week 7.28.12: social mathematics, Pluto's moons and humans-on-a-chip