Is there life under the icy armour of Saturn's moon Enceladus? Active surface fissures that spew ice – the so-called cryovolcanoes – throw enormous jets of water ice into space, jets that harbour organic compounds and thus a chance of life. If Europe's plans for a mission to Enceladus should become reality, German researchers intend to scrutinise its bodies of water for traces of life. In a first step taken under the EnEx (Enceladus Explorer) joint project funded by the German Aerospace Centre, they plan to use a melt probe to drill down to a subglacial lake in the Antarctic and take contamination-free samples from it. EnEx is implemented by a university consortium headed by the Aachen University of Applied Sciences, where a suitable instrument platform, called IceMole, is already available.