What NASA Found on Titan

On the 14th of January 2005, a European probe called Huygens fell through Titan's orange sky and landed on a surface that behaved like wet sand — scattered with rounded, liquid-smoothed pebbles. It had landed in a dry riverbed on a frozen moon of Saturn. This is what Cassini and Huygens actually found on Titan: seas of liquid methane larger than the Great Lakes, a nitrogen atmosphere thicker than Earth's, dunes of organic sand, a buried ocean of liquid water, and an island that appeared and vanished in a methane sea. And it's why NASA is sending Dragonfly back. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 The Landing That Shouldn't Have Happened 1:38 A Moon Bigger Than Mercury 3:13 The World We Couldn't See 4:29 Radar Vision 5:48 Huygens Descends 7:00 The Shoreline 8:01 A World Made of Methane 11:46 The Sand Seas of Titan 14:42 The Methane Paradox 16:11 A Molecule That Could Build Life 18:12 A Hidden Ocean 20:40 The Dragonfly Mission 22:44 Cassini's Final Dive SOURCES REFERENCED • Cassini–Huygens mission — NASA/JPL–Caltech & ESA (1997–2017) • Huygens probe descent and landing, 14 Jan 2005 — ESA • Iess, L. et al. (2012), "The Tides of Titan", Science — evidence for a subsurface ocean • Hofgartner, J.D. et al. (2014), "Transient features in a Titan sea", Nature Geoscience — the "magic island" in Ligeia Mare • Lorenz, R.D. et al. (2006), "The Sand Seas of Titan", Science — equatorial dune fields • Turtle, E.P. et al. (2011), "Rapid and Extensive Surface Changes Near Titan's Equator", Science — 2010 methane rainstorm • Palmer, M.Y. et al. (2017), "ALMA detection of vinyl cyanide in Titan's atmosphere", Science Advances • Dragonfly mission — NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory DISCLAIMER This video is an interpretation of publicly available, peer-reviewed research. All measurements and mission histories cited are from published literature and public NASA/ESA records. Where a possibility is discussed rather than an established fact, it is labelled as such. #space #nasa #astronomy #solarsystem #spacescience