Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is one of the solar system’s most fascinating destinations. It’s the second biggest moon in the solar system and the only one known to possess a thick atmosphere. The Cassini-Huygens mission has found it to be weirdly Earth-like, with rocky plains, languid lakes and even precipitation — only the world is so cold the rocks are probably water ice, and the lakes liquid methane. Now even its interior is giving up secrets, thanks to the gravitational data Cassini’s been gathering in its orbit around Saturn.
Astronomers had already suspected that Titan’s surface was a shell of water ice, with a subsurface (water) ocean lurking beneath. The new data, published in Nature this week, reveal that it’s a stronger, more rigid shell than previously thought, measuring at least 25 miles thick, and dozens of times more in some places.
Pop sci write up.
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