The Secrets of Titan

One of the strangest places in the solar system is Titan, and recent studies have only made it stranger. For long, the main assumption was that beneath the dense, murky atmosphere and the rivers and lakes of liquid methane, this moon had a large global ocean of water beneath its surface, a very promising condition for the existence of life. A new interpretation of NASA Cassini mission data published at the end of last year turned that view upside down. Rather than an ocean, Titan's interior is now believed to be made mostly of ice, with slushy layers and only isolated pockets of warm water close to the rocky core. It is not as spectacular as an ocean, but scientists say it could still harbor basic life, only in a very different way than was earlier thought.

Then comes the greatest puzzle: what actually made Titan? Earlier this year, a new study proposed that rather than forming the usual way, Titan was produced by a devastating collision between two ancient moons hundreds of millions of years ago. Such a violent origin may also have been the reason why Saturn's rings were found to be quite young. Besides all that, NASA's Dragonfly mission, a drone-like rotorcraft set to explore Titan's surface in the 2030s, is already in development. Along with the rewritten history of its creation, its unexpected interior, and a spacecraft actually on its way, Titan is becoming one of the most fascinating destinations in the entire solar system.

(Image Credit: NASA)