Your Vacation on Titan: The Moon Where You Could Fly

Mira's Travel Guide, stop two: Titan, Saturn's biggest moon. It has rain, rivers, lakes, seas and dunes, just like Earth, except the seas are liquid methane, the sand is frozen hydrocarbons, and it's minus 179 degrees. You wouldn't need a pressure suit. And with its thick air and low gravity, physicists have calculated you could fly with wings strapped to your arms. How to get there, what to pack, what you'd see and feel, the sights, the slow rain, the safety briefing (surprisingly short), and the only probe that has ever landed there. Chapters 0:00 Postcard 0:38 Getting there 1:10 Packing list 2:14 Arrival 3:11 Sights 4:15 Weather 4:39 Fly! 5:34 What kills you first 6:16 Who's been there 7:06 Passport stamp Question for you: where should the travel guide go next? (Hint: somewhere much hotter.) Sources: • NASA, Titan facts: https://science.nasa.gov/saturn/moons... • NASA, Dragonfly: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/drag... • NASA, Cassini: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/cass... • Science News, Cassini maps the depths of Titan's seas: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/c... • University of Leicester, Physics Special Topics (human flight on Titan): https://journals.le.ac.uk/index.php/p... • R. D. Lorenz, "The life, death and afterlife of a raindrop on Titan", Planetary and Space Science 41 (1993) Photos in the notebook (public domain / NASA): the surface of Titan and the descent mosaic from Huygens (ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona); Titan's lakes, Ligeia Mare and dunes in Cassini radar (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI); haze layers and Titan in front of Saturn (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute). Music: soft space bed (royalty-free, Pixabay license). Astro Bite Club: one cosmic mystery, one bite at a time. Hand-drawn in Mira's space notebook. #titan #saturn #space #astrobiteclub