The paper from researchers with the Cassini mission was published Thursday in the journal Science.
To be clear, scientists haven't discovered evidence of organisms on Enceladus, but they encouraged by the processes producing chemical energy, which could feed life. "Between there and what may exist on Europa and in subsurface water on Mars, the more we keep looking, the more tantalizing it becomes - that there may be life and there may be life in multiple locations".
The probe found the hydrogen when it made its last and closest pass through plumes at Enceladus' south pole on October 28, 2015. The spacecraft took reading of water and sent it back to earth for study.
The "exciting" discovery was made after the space probe Cassini flew through spray bursting from the moon's cracked icy surface.
"[The] fact that that we can measure such high concentrations of hydrogen and carbon dioxide mean that there might not be life there at all, and if there is life, it's not very active".
Enceladus is an icy moon a billion miles farther away from the sun than Earth is.
The Cassini craft was not created to detect signs of life, and scientists did not know the plume existed until they received data showing its existence.
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Life on Earth needs three main ingredients to exist and flourish: liquid water, a source of energy for metabolism and the right chemicals, primarily carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.
Cassini uncovered the hydrogen during its final close flyby of Enceladus in 2015, when it dove deeper than ever through the moon's clouds of vapor and particles.
Ice plumes shooting into space from the ocean-bearing moon contain hydrogen from hydrothermal vents, an environment that some scientists believe led to the rise of life on Earth.
NASA said in a press release that the presence of hydrogen in the sub-surface ocean "means that microbes - if any exist there - could use it to obtain energy by combining the hydrogen with carbon dioxide dissolved in water". It's set to launch sometime in the 2020s.
Voytek said her money is still on Europa for potential life, versus Enceladus, since Europa is much older and any potential life there has had more time to emerge.
"If there are plumes on Europa, as we now strongly suspect, with the Europa Clipper we will be ready for them", said James Green, NASA's Planetary Science Division Director.
This June 28, 2009 image provided by NASA, taken by the worldwide Cassini spacecraft, shows Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.
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