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Verbal·Information and Ideas·Inferences
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Data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus expels active plumes of water vapor and ice grains through fractures in its south polar crust, fed by a subsurface liquid ocean. While previous flybys detected water, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia within the plumes, planetary scientists remained uncertain whether the ocean contained soluble phosphorus, a critical element required for DNA, RNA, and cellular ATP synthesis. In a 2023 study, geochemist Frank Postberg and colleagues analyzed high-resolution spectra of ice grains captured by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer and identified abundant sodium phosphate salts. Because phosphorus concentrations in Enceladus’s ocean water were calculated to be at least 100 times higher than those in Earth’s oceans, the researchers suggest that       
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A
Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer should be recalibrated, since its spectra most likely overestimated the abundance of sodium phosphate salts.
B
phosphorus in Enceladus’s plumes originally arrived from Earth’s oceans, whose water chemistry the moon closely resembles.
C
Enceladus’s ocean contains the phosphorus needed for essential biomolecules, strengthening the possibility that the moon’s ocean could support life.
D
Enceladus is the only body in the solar system whose ocean holds soluble phosphorus.