View of Enceladus's surface, showing several tectonic and crater degradation styles. Taken by Cassini on 9 March 2005

A comprehensive map made by the Cassini-Solstice mission examining Saturn’s tiny, icy moon Enceladus has netted a surprising result. The little world is coated in super fine ice crystal estimated to be hundred of meters deep in some places:

This powder would likely make pe­r­fect ski­ing ma­te­ri­al, ac­cord­ing to Paul Schenk of the Lu­nar and Plan­e­tary In­sti­tute in Hous­ton, Tex­as. He pre­sented find­ings by his re­search team Oct. 3 at the 2011 joint meet­ing of the Amer­i­can As­tro­nom­i­cal So­ci­ety’s Di­vi­sion for Plan­e­tary Sci­ences and the Eu­ro­pe­an Plan­e­tary Sci­ence Con­gress in Nantes, France.

The ice crystals are theorized to build up over millions of years from cryo-geysers. On earth a skier would sink to the bottom of such a powder pile, in fact the powder itself would be converted to firn and hard ice over time by gravity and weathering. But in Enceladus’ weak 0.11 G field and near absolute vacuum the powder can accumulate basically, forever.