{"id":79693,"date":"2025-12-26T14:17:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T08:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=79693"},"modified":"2025-12-26T14:17:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T08:47:17","slug":"titan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/titan\/","title":{"rendered":"Titan"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Titan Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Saturn&#8217;s largest moon, Titan, may not have a subsurface ocean after all, according to a re-examination of data captured by NASA&#8217;s Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Titan dozens of times starting in 2004. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Titan<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Titan is <\/span><b>Saturn&#8217;s largest mo<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dutch astronomer <\/span><b>Christiaan Huygens discovered <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Titan on March 25, <\/span><b>1655<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>second largest moon <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in our <\/span><b><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/solar-system\/\" target=\"_blank\">solar system<\/a>.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Only Jupiter&#8217;s moon Ganymede is larger, by just 2 percent.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has a radius of about 2,575 kilometers, and is nearly 50 percent wider than Earth\u2019s moon.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s the <\/span><b>only world besides Earth <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that has <\/span><b>standing bodies of liquid<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, including rivers, lakes, and seas, on its surface.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Like Earth, Titan\u2019s atmosphere <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is <\/span><b>primarily nitrogen<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, plus a small amount of methane.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>sole other place in the solar system <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">known to have an<\/span><b> earth-like cycle of liquids raining from clouds,<\/b> <b>flowing across its surface<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, filling lakes and seas, and <\/span><b>evaporating back into the sky<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (<\/span><b>akin to Earth\u2019s water cycle).\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Titan takes 15 days and 22 hours to complete a full orbit of Saturn.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Titan is also <\/span><b>tidally locked in synchronous rotation with Saturn<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, meaning that, like Earth\u2019s Moon, Titan always shows the same face to the planet as it orbits.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Key Facts about Cassini Spacecraft<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a <\/span><b>joint project of NASA, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the <\/span><b>European Space Agency, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the <\/span><b>Italian Space Agency (ASI).<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cassini was a sophisticated <\/span><b>robotic spacecraft <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sent to <\/span><b>study Saturn<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>its complex system of rings and moons<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in unprecedented detail.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was <\/span><b>launched <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on October 15, <\/span><b>1997<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It was one of the largest interplanetary spacecraft.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mission consisted of <\/span><b>NASA\u2019s Cassini orbiter,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which was the <\/span><b>first space probe to orbit Saturn, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the <\/span><b>ESA\u2019s Huygens probe,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which <\/span><b>landed on Titan,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Saturn\u2019s largest moon.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/titan-may-not-be-an-ocean-world-after-all-the-truth-is-stranger\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SA<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Titan, Saturn\u2019s largest moon, has a dense atmosphere, liquid lakes and an Earth-like cycle. New Cassini data questions the presence of a subsurface ocean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":79727,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,4431,350],"class_list":{"0":"post-79693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-prelims-pointers","9":"tag-titan","10":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-afffairs","11":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}