Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, has long been suspected to be home to lakes and rivers filled with natural gas, and NASA’s Cassini and Huygens Missions backed those suspicions up with groundbreaking data and facts.
Titan is Saturn’s largest moon. Cassini arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, and since with its radar and infrared technology has exposed the moon’s conditions, which are very similar to the early Earth, but also extremely different from our current world.
Though there is a thick haze that surrounds Titan due to the sunlight breaking apart the methane, Cassini was designed to see through the smog. It was able to capture Titan’s surface, and reveal its many rivers and lakes that are comprised with liquid ethane and methane. These liquid formations accumulate into clouds and sporadically rain over the moon’s surface, much like water does on Earth.
Titan is the only moon known to have a slightly higher pressure than Earth. The surface temperature is extremely cold, close to -290F. Because of these extremely low temperatures, water is frozen solid, and the natural gas from the rivers and lakes flows freely.
“There is so much methane on Titan that if free oxygen were also present, a single spark could cause the entire moon to erupt in flames.” –Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Huygens made history on Jan. 14, 2005 by making the first landing on a body in the Outer Solar System. It landed in a flood plain that was saturated in liquid methane. It gave scientists a closer look from Titan’s surface, and produced amazing detailed photos.
As more research develops, Cassini is scheduled to pass closely by the moon again, gathering new and updated data.
Check out the video and latest images here
