News Archive / Tagged: Titan

• Cassini prepares to graze Saturn’s rings

  Paul KnightlyNovember 26th, 2016

  NASA's robotic Cassini spacecraft will begin a grand tour of Saturn’s ring system starting this week as the mission enters into its final stages.

• Dramatic seasonal changes on Titan captured by Cassini

  Laurel KornfeldOctober 23rd, 2016

  As those in the Northern Hemisphere mark the seasonal changes in the glorious colors of the leaves changing, NASA's Cassini orbiter is also seeing changes on a world far removed from our own. The spacecraft, in orbit around the Saturn system since 2004, has observed the planet and its moons long enough to capture seasonal changes on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

• Cassini spacecraft spies dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan

  Jim SharkeySeptember 12th, 2016

  Scientists are learning more about the frigid landscape of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, from recent radar images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

• Titan’s canyons are flooded with liquid hydrocarbons

  Laurel KornfeldAugust 11th, 2016

  Radar data gathered by the Cassini Saturn orbiter have revealed that steep canyons on the planet's large moon Titan are filled with liquid hydrocarbons. During a close pass over Titan in May 2013, Cassini used its radar as an altimeter, or instrument to measure altitude, to study its canyons up close by pinging radio waves to the moon's surface to measure its features' height.

• Data from Huygens lander suggest prebiotic conditions on Titan

  Tomasz NowakowskiJuly 11th, 2016

  Although 11 years have passed since ESA’s Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan, the data collected by this spacecraft continue to amaze scientists. Recently, a team of researchers led by Martin Rahm of Cornell University has found a chemical trail indicating prebiotic conditions may exist on this moon.

• Cassini confirms methane sea on Titan

  Jim SharkeyApril 29th, 2016

  Saturn's moon Titan is the only moon in the Solar System that has a dense atmosphere and large liquid reserves on its surface. A new study using data gathered by NASA's Cassini mission finds that Ligeia Mare, the second largest of Titan's seas, is composed mostly of pure liquid methane. The findings provide independent confirmation of an earlier study.

• Cassini spots tallest mountain on Titan

  Derek RichardsonMarch 27th, 2016

  The tallest peak on Saturn’s moon Titan has been spotted by scientists working on NASA’s Cassini mission. The peak is near Titan’s equator within a trio of mountainous ridges called Mithrim Montes and is about 10,948 feet (3,337 meters) high. It was found using images from Cassini’s radar instrument, which peers through the thick, orange-like smog of the moon’s atmosphere.

• Our SpaceFlight Heritage: Huygens lands on Titan a decade ago

  Joe LatrellDecember 9th, 2015

  Ten years ago the clouds of an alien world were pierced by a small space probe hurled from the planet Earth. On Jan. 14, 2005, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully deployed the Huygens probe to the cloud-covered Saturnian moon Titan.

• Celebrating a storied history in the heavens: 10th anniversary of the final Titan

  Press ReleaseOctober 21st, 2015

  It was 10 years ago when Barb Sande gazed upward to watch the last Titan rocket soar into a cloudless, blue sky from its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. “My husband and I attended the final Titan launch and it’s an enduring memory,” Barb reflected. “It was Oct. 19, 2005, and it was a gorgeous, clear day – which also happened to be the day before my 50th birthday. It was bittersweet to see the last vehicle fly while celebrating this personal milestone.”

• NASA team designing sub to explore Titan’s seas

  Michael ColeSeptember 5th, 2015

  An engineering team at NASA's Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, Ohio, is designing one of the most unusual vehicles in NASA's history – a submarine to explore Saturn's moon Titan.

• NASA unveils robotic submarine concept for exploring Titan’s oceans

  Jim SharkeyFebruary 19th, 2015

  Earlier this month, NASA released an animated video depicting a proposed robotic submarine capable of exploring the liquid hydrocarbon seas of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The concept, which is a project of NASA Glenn’s COMPASS team, was presented at this year’s NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC ) symposium.

• Our SpaceFlight Heritage: 40th anniversary of the Titan IIIE/Centaur launch

  Gregory CecilFebruary 12th, 2015

  On Feb. 11, 1974, the first launch of the Titan IIIE/Centaur (TC 1) was carried out from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Titan IIIE/Centaur was designed to meet NASA’s payload requirements for future unmanned probes and this mission was a “Proof of Concept” flight. The launch was conducted by the Unmanned […]

• We’ve landed on Titan: ESA scientists recollect the historic landing 10 years ago

  Tomasz NowakowskiJanuary 15th, 2015

  Ten years ago, on Jan. 14, 2005, an orange-tinged image, showing alien scenery with lots of pebbles on the horizon, was at the center of European Space Agency (ESA) scientists’ attention. The snapshot of a distant world’s landscape was truly amazing. It was Saturn’s moon Titan with an orange surface seen through the lens of ESA’s Huygens […]

• Titan’s seas and lakes sparkle in the sunlight in recent Cassini images

  Paul Scott AndersonNovember 3rd, 2014

  Saturn’s moon Titan is a unique world, and the only place in the Solar System known to have seas and lakes (liquid methane/ethane) on its surface, other than Earth. And just like our home world, if you look at them at the right moment from space, you can see sunlight gleaming off of them, as […]

• Titan sea could be as ‘salty’ as the Dead Sea

  SpaceFlight InsiderJuly 23rd, 2014

  Recent data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft indicates the ocean inside the large moon, Titan, could be as salty as the Dead Sea here on Earth. Scientists collected gravity and topography data during Cassini’s various flybys of Titan over the past decade and were able to present a model structure of the moon, yielding a better […]