Lets meet Titan again!

Titan is the second largest moon of the Solar System (after Jupiter's Ganymede) and the largest moon of Saturn. It has icy and rocky materials in its interior and is the only moon that has a denser atmosphere than the Earth. Its surface has been characterised to have a combination of features- lakes, craters, volcanoes, mountains! The surface is ideal for understanding the chemical processes that took place before life emerged.

Titan was discovered by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, after whom ESA's Huygens probe of NASA's Cassini mission was named. On 14 January 2005, the probe touched down at the surface and provided us with measurements before its lifetime of 72 minutes after a 2 hours descent. 

Dragonfly is a NASA rotorcraft lander mission that will visit the moon in 2034 with launch in July 2028. The plan is to fly to different locations on Titan and collect data to understand the progression of prebiotic chemistry and characterise habitability of its environment. The mission will be a first of its kind with many technical feats such as operating in temperatures of -180°C in an atmosphere that is four times denser. 

Good luck to Dragonfly! Lets meet Titan again!

Image credits: NASA/John Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

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Shivangi Sharan is a postdoctoral research associate at Imperial College London, working on prioritising the research that will be carried out using the JUICE magnetometer data. Previously, she has worked on the interior of Mars and Jupiter using their magnetic observations. She is an active member of the IAGA Blog Team and can be contacted via e-mail here.

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