Cassini Spacecraft Observations Indicate That Saturn's Moon Titan Is More Earth-Like

Cassini spacecraft observations indicate Saturn's moon Titan is more Earth-like

Written by Jeanne Rife on 28 Apr 2016

Oceanographers can possibly study alien worlds sooner than thought. NASA's Cassini spacecraft observations have indicated that Saturn's moon Titan is a lot like our planet Earth, with its thick atmosphere, surface filled with lakes and probable wetlands.

NASA said that besides Earth, Titan is the sole known world in the solar system that has a stable liquid on its surface. Cassini has discovered over 620,000 square miles of surface of Titan covered in liquid, nearly 2% of its surface, since 2004. Planetary scientists used to ponder over what elements fill the liquid bodies of Titan, but thanks to Cassini as now they have got the answer.

The current study was conducted between 2007 and 2015 with the help of Cassini’s radar instrument for analyzing the second largest sea of Titan, called Ligeia Mare, and it revealed that the sea was filled with methane.

Published in the ‘Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets’, the study has given confirmation to what planetary scientists used to think about Titan's seas.

According to the news release, with the help of Cassini’s radar instrument for the detection of the echoes from the seafloor of Ligeia Mare, scientists have used the depth-sounding information to examine temperatures, which proved helpful in providing clues regarding their composition.

Study lead author, Alice Le Gall, a Cassini radar team member, said, “Before Cassini, we expected to find that Ligeia Mare would be mostly made up of ethane, which is produced in abundance in the atmosphere when sunlight breaks methane molecules apart. Instead, this sea is predominantly made of pure methane”.

NASA said that the size of Ligeia Mare is about the size of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan together. Thanks to Cassini’s flybys scientists managed to know that the sea was 525 feet deep at a few sites.

"The latest data NASA researchers have been pouring over shows new details about the strange lakes and seas that trickle across Saturn’s frigid moon, Titan. It also draws comparisons between the only other interstellar body found to have similarly liquid lakes and seas on its surface—our very own Earth. Unlike our watery planet, though, Titan’s lakes and seas are made up of pure liquid methane," according to a news report published by Gizmodo.

But how do the seas stay filled up with all that methane? One potential new explanation takes the liquid cycle we see here on Earth, tweaks it slightly to account for Titan’s own conditions, and comes up with something pretty familiar: Rain.

According to a report in CNET by Michelle Starr, "The final mission is, fittingly, called the Grand Finale, and there's a lot more involved than simply falling down. As the probe gets closer and closer to Saturn, it will have an unprecedented opportunity to study its minutiae, as detailed by NASA's Linda Spilker at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly last week."

Don't cry for Cassini, though. Its mission has already been extended twice, far exceeding its four-year expectation, and its running out of fuel. Leaving it in unfueled orbit around the planet risks crashing into Enceladus or Titan, the potentially life-sustaining liquid water on which could be contaminated by microbes that could still be living on Cassini, even after 20 years.

A report published in SpaceDaily informed, "Saturn's largest moon is covered in seas and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons - and one sea has now been found to be filled with pure methane, with a seabed covered by a sludge of organic-rich material, and possibly surrounded by wetlands."

Both Earth and Titan have atmospheres dominated by nitrogen, over 95% in Titan's case. However, unlike Earth, there is little oxygen: the remaining is mostly methane, with a small amount of hydrogen, and trace amounts of other gases such as ethane.

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