Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has liquid seas near its north pole made of hydrocarbons, mainly liquid methane or ethane. These seas are the only other stable liquid seas in the solar system besides Earth. The Cassini-Huygens space probe confirmed their existence in 2007, along with other geographic features. Titan’s atmosphere is 99.8% nitrogen, making it non-flammable. The probe’s journey to Saturn lasted just under seven years and cost US$3.26 billion.
Saturn’s largest moon Titan has some liquid seas near its north pole, the only other stable liquid seas in the entire solar system other than Earth. But don’t put on your bathing suit just yet, because these seas are full of hydrocarbons, mainly liquid methane or ethane. The largest of these seas that has been conclusively confirmed is the size of Lake Superior. One possible sea is several times larger, approaching the size of the Caspian Sea. Drainage channels and other revealing geographic features were also mapped.
If Titan’s atmosphere had oxygen, a single match could set fire to an area hundreds or even thousands of square miles, since hydrocarbons are flammable. Fortunately, Titan’s atmosphere is 99.8% nitrogen. Titan is the only other rocky body in the solar system with an atmosphere composed of more than a few traces of gas. The atmosphere is so thick and gravity so low that a human with wings strapped to their arms would be able to pass through it with little effort.
Since it was discovered in 1655, Titan has been largely a mystery, as it is covered in thick clouds like the planet Venus. However, a recent mission by the Cassini-Huygens space probe has given us a huge amount of new information about this alien world, confirming the existence of Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes in January 2007. Cassini, the orbiter, left dropping the Huygens probe to Titan’s surface on January 14, 2005.
Dozens of flybys of Cassini orbit have confirmed the existence of Titan’s long-hypothesized hydrocarbon lakes, along with geographic features such as a well-defined coastline, islands, drainage channels and nearby mountains. Cassini-Huygens is an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The probe’s journey to Saturn lasted just under seven years and is the first artificial satellite to orbit Saturn, but the fourth to visit it. The total cost of the project was US$3.26 billion.
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