Recently in the Titan Category

In response to ESA Voyage 2050 announcement of opportunity, we propose an ambitious L-class mission to explore one of the most exciting bodies in the Solar System, Saturn largest moon Titan.

Key questions surrounding the origin and evolution of Titan and the Saturnian system in which it resides remain following the Cassini-Huygens mission.

With future space exploration in mind, a Cornell-led team of astronomers has published the final maps of Titan's liquid methane rivers and tributaries - as seen by NASA's late Cassini mission - so that may help provide context for Dragonfly's upcoming 2030s expedition.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a natural laboratory to study the origins of life. Like Earth, Titan has a dense atmosphere and seasonal weather cycles, but the chemical and mineralogical makeup are significantly different.

Among our solar system's many moons, Saturn's Titan stands out - it's the only moon with a substantial atmosphere and liquid on the surface. It even has a weather system like Earth's, though it rains methane instead of water. Might it also host some kind of life?

According to clues left by the Cassini mission, Titan, one of the two Solar System bodies with a hydrologic cycle, may harbor liquid hydrocarbon-based analogs of our terrestrial aquifers, referred to as "alkanofers". On the Earth, petroleum and natural gas reservoirs show a vertical gradient in chemical composition, established over geological timescales.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, supports a dense atmosphere, numerous bodies of liquid on its surface, and as a richly organic world is a primary focus for understanding the processes that support the development of life.

On Titan, methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6) are the dominant species found in the lakes and seas.

Thanks to the Cassini-Huygens mission, Titan, the pale orange dot of Pioneer and Voyager encounters has been revealed to be a dynamic, hydrologically-shaped, organic-rich ocean world offering unparalleled opportunities to explore prebiotic chemistry.

This study presents a 13 years survey of haze UV extinction profiles, monitoring the temporal evolution of the detached haze layer (DHL) in Titan's upper atmosphere (350-600 km).