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Titan may foreshadow Earth's desert future |
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The News -
Science-Astronomy
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Written by Administrator
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The enigmatic Saturnian moon Titan is still yielding surprising new details years after scientists first pierced its thick haze veil. The vision now emerging of Saturn's largest moon, with its giant dunes and oceanless surface, is perhaps a glimpse of Earth's desert future. "Titan may be very different from Earth today, but maybe not Earth tomorrow," Jonathan Lunine, Cassini-Huygens interdisciplinary scientist at the University of Arizona, told Space.com. The surface of Titan was a total mystery before the Huygens probe infiltrated past its dense hazy atmosphere in 2005. After a seven-year voyage aboard the Cassini spacecraft, Huygens spent roughly two-and-a-half hours parachuting down and then sent transmissions from Titan's surface for another 70 minutes before Cassini moved out of range. The mission was a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Source : MSNBC Space
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