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Titan

SPACE: Titan’s Largest sea is Really Deep, Too

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Titan - NASA

NASA’s epic Cassini mission at Saturn is still generating valuable scientific data more than three years after its demise. Data from one of the spacecraft’s last flybys of Titan, a large moon with the precursors of life’s chemistry, reveals that a huge lake on the surface called Kraken Mare is more than 1,000 feet ( 300 meters) deep — that’s roughly the equivalent of the height of New York City’s Chrysler Building. In fact, the lake is so deep that Cassini’s radar couldn’t probe all the way to the bottom. Back in 2014, preliminary data from this flyby suggested that … Read more

SPACE: Titan’s Possibility of Life Takes a Hit

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Saturn’s most Earth-like moon looks a bit less likely to host life, thanks to quantum mechanics, the weird rules that govern subatomic particles. Titan, the second largest moon in our solar system after Jupiter’s Ganymede, is unique in two ways that have convinced some researchers that this moon might host extraterrestrial life: It’s the only moon in our solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it’s the only body in space, besides Earth, known to definitely have pools of liquid on its surface. In Titan’s case, those pools are frigid lakes of hydrocarbons, closer to the gasoline in a car … Read more

SPACE: The Seas of Titan

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Seas of Titan

The Saturn system may be the most beautiful in the solar system. As well as its spectacular rings, the Saturn system features more than 50 named moons and dozens of smaller moonlets. The largest of Saturn’s moons, Titan, is larger than the planet Mercury. It has a dense atmosphere of mainly nitrogen and is the only place in the solar system, apart from earth, with seas of liquid at the surface. The seas of Titan are very different from oceans on earth. Instead of water, they are comprised of the hydrocarbons methane and ethane, which are kept liquid by the … Read more

Colonizing Space

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Beyond Earth

In Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets, Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R. Hendrix propose colonizing Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and the second largest moon in the solar system. They reject constructing colonies on Mars and the Moon, claiming Titan offers the most resources for creating a permanent human settlement. Even though I don’t buy their premise, Wohlforth and Hendrix have written a book that nicely sums up the current knowledge on human space travel. What’s damning and depressing is their long litany of obstacles we face living in space. Over the years I’ve … Read more

Cassini Mission to End in Fiery Plunge Into Saturn

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Saturn/Titan

Of the 173 known moons orbiting the eight major planets of our solar system, only one ― Saturn’s Titan ― has an atmosphere, lakes and streams. And that’s not all. There’s also speculation that Titan ― half the size of Earth ― could harbor life forms or be a possible future home for Earthlings. The provocative moon was even featured in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1959 novel The Sirens of Titan, which tells the story of a millionaire on a quest for the ultimate meaning of existence. To study this remarkable moon, NASA launched its Cassini spacecraft in 1997. After maneuvering through … Read more