Titan

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Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may not have a subsurface ocean after all, according to a re-examination of data captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Titan dozens of times starting in 2004.

About Titan

• Titan is Saturn’s largest moon. 
• Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan on March 25, 1655. 
• It is the second largest moon in our solar system. Only Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is larger, by just 2 percent. 
• It has a radius of about 2,575 kilometers, and is nearly 50 percent wider than Earth’s moon.
• It is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere.
• It’s the only world besides Earth that has standing bodies of liquid, including rivers, lakes, and seas, on its surface.
• Like Earth, Titan’s atmosphere is primarily nitrogen, plus a small amount of methane.
• It is the sole other place in the solar system known to have an earth-like cycle of liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface, filling lakes and seas, and evaporating back into the sky (akin to Earth’s water cycle). 
• Titan takes 15 days and 22 hours to complete a full orbit of Saturn.
• Titan is also tidally locked in synchronous rotation with Saturn, meaning that, like Earth’s Moon, Titan always shows the same face to the planet as it orbits. 

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Key Facts about Cassini Spacecraft

• It is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
• Cassini was a sophisticated robotic spacecraft sent to study Saturn and its complex system of rings and moons in unprecedented detail.
• It was launched on October 15, 1997. It was one of the largest interplanetary spacecraft.
• The mission consisted of NASA’s Cassini orbiter, which was the first space probe to orbit Saturn, and the ESA’s Huygens probe, which landed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Source: SA